Module 1 – Prevention and preparedness | Team member arrangements
In an emergency, your practice may experience a significant reduction in team member capacity and therefore service capability. When planning for an emergency, it’s important to keep in mind that there are many reasons why your practice team members may be, or may become, absent during an event.
For example, team members may be absent from your practice during an emergency because they:
- have been personally impacted by the disaster at their home,
- must support family members or other dependents who have been impacted by the event,
- Are unable to commute or have no access to the practice due to road or other infrastructure damage,
- are sick,
- must care for sick family members, children or other dependents,
- have regular contact with someone who is terminally ill and cannot risk cross-infection,
- are more vulnerable to risks from the disaster (e.g., they are pregnant or have chronic medical conditions),
- work part-time or casually at an external healthcare service (i.e. a hospital or emergency service) and are directed to assist at another location, or
- are members of volunteer emergency services.
With this information in mind, take time to consider how your practice will continue operating with a reduction in key team members.
One way to help alleviate team member availability issues in the event of an emergency is to provide your team with education and training in other roles (where appropriate) within the practice. If there are multiple team member absences because of an emergency, practice members with basic training and education in other roles can be cross-skilled and may be able to perform other duties.
You may also wish to contact other nearby practices to ascertain if they have capacity to provide some temporary team members and discuss the feasibility of pooling team members and resources in the event of an emergency. Of course, it is helpful if these relationships have been established as part of your emergency preparation, and contacts and arrangements are already laid out in your emergency response plan.
We also recommend contacting your local (PHN) to find out what further advice, support or connections to the emergency management community are available.
Consider mapping where your practice team members live in proximity to your practice. Who may be directly impacted or have their practice access limited in disaster or emergency events relevant to your practice?
Take action
Think about how your practice will continue operating should you experience a reduction in key team members. Consider:
- cross-skilling team members, enabling them to perform another team member’s duties in their absence,
- mapping where your team members live in proximity to your practice,
- contacting nearby practices to discuss potentials for collaboration in the event of an emergency, and
- reaching out to your local PHN to ask for further advice and connections that may be useful to you in such scenarios.
Any decisions made or plans developed in collaboration with other practices or organisations should be written down in plain, simple language and included within your emergency response plan.
Examples of how you may present the above information can be found below.
Example presentation of team member emergency role and home location details:
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Team member role and home location details
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Name
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Emergency role
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Cross-skilled in the following emergency roles
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Home address/approx. kms from practice
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Notes:
[include any relevant emergency role succession plans or specific considerations regarding the individual during an event such as immunisation status or other preferences]
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Example presentation of collaboration plans with other practices:
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Collaboration plans/opportunities with local practices
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Practice name and address
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Contact details
[provide specific contact names where applicable]
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Collaboration plans/opportunities:
[keep information as simple as possible using dot points where possible]
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