Valley City, ND, Demographics – NHS-FPX-4060 Assessment 3: Disaster Recovery Plan Population: 8,295 (up from 6,585 in 2010 census)

Valley City, ND, Demographics – NHS-FPX-4060 Assessment 3: Disaster Recovery Plan Population: 8,295 (up from 6,585 in 2010 census)

Valley City, ND, Demographics – NHS-FPX-4060 Assessment 3: Disaster Recovery Plan

Population: 8,295 (up from 6,585 in 2010 census)

Median Age: 43.6 years. 17.1% under age 18; 14.8% between 18 and 24; 21.1% between 25 and 44; 24.9% 46 – 64; 22% 65 or older.

Officially, residents are 93% white, 3% Latino, 2% African-American, 1% Native American, 1% other.

—additionally, unknown number of undocumented migrant workers with limited English proficiency

Special needs: 204 residents are elderly with complex health conditions; 147 physically disabled and/or use lip-reading or American Sign Language to communicate.

Note that the Valley City Homeless shelter runs at  capacity and is generally unable to accommodate all of the city’s homeless population. Also, the city is in the midst of a financial crisis, with bankruptcy looming, and has instituted layoffs at the police and fire departments.

Valley City Region Hospital Fact Sheet

105-bed hospital (currently 97 patients; 5 on ventilators, 2 in hospice care.)

NOTEWORTHY: Both of VCRH’s ambulances are aging and in need of overhaul. Also, much of the hospital’s basic infrastructure and equipment is old and showing wear. The hospital has run at persistent deficits and has been unable to upgrade; may be looking at downsizing nursing staff.

Jennifer Paulson

Administrator, Valley City Hospital

Hello, thanks for stopping by. I hope you’re settling in well.

I’d been planning on talking to you about disaster planning in the near future anyway, but now it looks like it’s a lot more urgent. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but the National Weather Service says we’re going to be at an elevated risk for severe tornadoes in Valley City this season. I’m taking that as a clear sign that it’s time we get serious about disaster planning.

And it’s not just me… The mayor just called me and asked the hospital to check our preparedness for a mass-casualty event, given recent qualms about the way the derailment was handled. For instance, did you see that op-ed in the paper about disaster planning?

Anyway. My particular concern is patient triage in the near term and recovery efforts over the next six months. As I work on a more formal response to the Mayor about where we’re at for this threat, I’d appreciate it if you could do some research and planning on this matter. Even if we dodge the bullet on these tornadoes, there’ll be something else in the future. We need to stop putting it off and get serious about our disaster planning.

What I’d like for you to do first is take some time to talk to a good cross-section of people here at the hospital about what happened last time, and about our disaster plan in general. Make sure you get people from administration as well as frontline care staff; after all, problems can be visible in one area but not another a lot of times.

So spread it around! Since you weren’t here for the train crisis, I think you’re in a unique position to have a fresh, unbiased outlook on it. Actually, first you might find it useful to take a look at the hospital fact sheet, just to brush up on our basics here.

After you’ve looked at the fact sheet and done some talking to people, I’d like you to swing back by and we’ll talk about next steps.

Thanks!

Kate McVeigh

RN

Hey there! Yeah, I think I have a minute or two to talk about the derailment. Wow. It’s crazy. I guess that’s been a while, but it still feels like it just happened. It’s all so vivid!

I was on shift when it happened, so I was here for the whole thing. The blast, the first few injuries, and then the wave. I think I was working for 16 hours before Heather, the former head nurse, told me to leave before I passed out.

I just remember a big jumble. We had waves of people coming in before we were really aware of what we were up against. Someone actually brought out the disaster plan but it was kind of useless. Just a bunch of words about using resources wisely and what have you, no concrete steps or plan. And then people started pouring in and we started treating them and there just wasn’t time to figure out how to make that stuff about using resources wisely into an actual, concrete plan.

I mean, of course it’s good advice to use your damned resources wisely in an emergency! But just saying that doesn’t help. Without a plan, we were just working our way through a line, or really more like a crowd, without any thought of triage or priorities or anything. You knew as you were doing it that it was b

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