Public Health Disaster Preparedness - Essay Example

"Public Health Disaster Preparedness" is a decent example of a paper on poisoning, toxicology, and environmental health. 
Social determinants have affected ways that societies react to disasters including factors such as resources, education, and health care among others. Emergency preparedness also depends on some of the social aspects such as the economic stability of various societies that are prone to natural disasters. Resources combined with professionalism can be used in gathering information on the progress of disasters such as hurricanes.

However, some disasters are unavoidable and depend on the emergency preparedness of various in terms of health and resources to evacuate and deals with such situations. Nurses are part of disaster responses in the health sector (McHugh, 2012). Research from previous disasters can be used as the foundation for preparing nurses for future disasters. For example, nurses were the frontline responders after Hurricane Sandy devastated the North-Eastern coast of the U.S (Veenema 2012).  The public health emergency sector consists of disasters from natural, artificial, and combative fields (Redlener and Reilly, 2012). Nurses have to be prepared in all sectors in both the knowledge and management of the situation. Based on the current sociological trends, nurses should also learn disaster preparedness on biological, chemical, and radiological terrorism hazards.

Potential implications

Social health determinants have different impacts on the level of disaster preparedness in society. Personal factors such as savings and investments affect ways that individuals can react to a natural catastrophe. Resources also reflect personal health; hence affecting the outcomes of a disaster. Infrastructure levels in a society portray different impacts such as the rate of individual evacuation in the disaster zones (Redlener and Reilly, 2012). Major highways may present a faster and convenient way to evacuate and transfer nurses that have specialized in offering emergency services.

Resources should be allocated to disaster management departments, which will improve their assistance in dealing with the aftermath of various disasters such as Katrina. They can be used in providing food and sanitary for the affected. In extreme situations, the resources can also be used in resettling individuals through building new homes and servicing power and water lines. Societies with advanced communication, transportation, water, and electricity distribution systems have the added advantage in recovering after disasters due to the high levels of preparedness.

People living in poverty are affected differently by the disasters. For example, most of the individuals did not have enough resources such as vehicles to evacuate within the specified time. They had to rely on government transportation that at the time were overwhelmed by the large areas of evacuation. Additionally, disasters such as earthquakes in Haiti caused devastation in poverty-stricken areas whereby individuals could not get access to basic needs such as sanitary, food, clean water, and shelter. Consequently, poverty led to many individuals becoming homeless due to the lack of funds to reconstruct their homes. They also lack benefits such as insurances that may help in rebuilding individual homes after the events of a natural disaster.

Advanced nursing practices should be incorporated while dealing with natural disasters (Wall, 2011). The nursing departments should work together with evacuation and research departments to predict the outcome of disasters such as Hurricane Sandy. The knowledge will be used to guide the nurses in their evacuation treatment practices.