HealthSouth: The Wagon to Disaster Aaron Beam tells all in his novel entitled, “HealthSouth: The Wagon to Disaster” surrounding the fraud case amounting to $2.8 billion. Beam is the co-founder and Chief Financial Officer of HealthSouth whereas his partner-in-crime Richard Scrushy, also the co-founder, is the CEO. Beam was reluctant to work for Scrushy since he was not sure if the man was plain brilliant or just plain trouble. Nonetheless, he decided to work with him since he needed the job.
Chastity Jones, an African-American and the defendant in this case, was denied a job offer due to her appearance. Catastrophe Management Solutions, located in Mobile, Alabama, announced that it was seeking candidates with basic computer knowledge to work as customer service representatives. Ms. Jones completed an online employment application, and was selected for an in-person interview at a later date with other applicants. Ms. Jones arrived dressed in a blue business suit with her hair in short dreadlocks. She interviewed with a company representative to discuss the qualifications of the position, then Ms. Jones and other selected applicants were bought into a room with CMS’s human resources manager to be informed they were hired for the
The targets for this goal are going to be very difficult to measure as climate change is constantly evolving and data will therefore never be specific. “Measuring resilience and adaptive capacity to climate hazards and natural disasters in all countries” is going to be more complex than just collecting the occurrences of these climatic events. Similarly, every government is capable of observing and collecting data on their progress when considering the implementation of measures in target 13.2 and of education programs and the organization of awareness campaigns in target 13.3. However, the difficulty of measuring these targets is that their assessment is based on subjectivity, except for their financial aspect.
The terrorist attacks on September 11 2001 were a sad day for our nation, yet it showed the vulnerabilities in the Americans emergency management system. President Jimmy Carter made a good effort with the creation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but as 9/11 proved FEMA was not equipped to management terrorist threats. The nation needed something fay beyond what FEMA could offer, which lead to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Historically, major disasters have always prompt change in the American culture take for example the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Community health nursing is directed toward improving the health outcomes of the community through the prevention of disease as well as handling crises in the case of a natural disaster. In the following discussion, I will describe the stages to preparing for a tornado because of the potential of happening my local area and the public nurse’s role during each of the stages. Managing a disaster starts with the first stage which is the prevention phase. The demographics of local area need to be identified by trending the vulnerable groups so that extra attention and care can be provided.
What is social vulnerability? The idea of social vulnerability inside the emergency management setting was first presented in the 1970’s when emergency managers first realized that vulnerability also encompasses socioeconomic influences that negatively impact resiliency to disasters or emergencies. Form the perspective of an emergency manager social vulnerability refers to the socioeconomic and demographic factors that impact the resiliency of individuals, groups or communities. It has been well established that not all classes of individuals living within a disaster area are affected by the disaster in the same way.
The National Preparedness System “outlines an organized process for everyone” and consists of six parts (National preparedness system, n.d.). These parts identify and assess risk, estimate and determine the capabilities and activities necessary to confront the situations, consider the best way to use resources to build capabilities, prepare, plan and deliver for each part of a community, validate capabilities, and finally review and update when necessary (id.). There are systems in place to do this including the Strategic National Risk Assessment, the State Emergency Operations Plans, the National Incident Management System, the Remedial Action Management Program, and the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment
Housing conditions are comprised of the actual physical infrastructure of the house (whether it is sub-par construction or manufactured housing), homeownership and location/overcrowding. The housing conditions directly reflect what Tierney describes as the “affluence” of the populations, which is the ability to have affordable, well-constructed, self-owned homes. Many people at the lower end of the social class strata are living in poorly made/maintain housing, which they rent, in areas that are prone to disaster. Many of these individuals are unable to afford better housing, transportation, or have the ability to evacuate or prepare for a disaster. Similarly, after a disaster, these populations have a much lower resilience due to their social factors.
Furthermore, the utilization of response to address life safety, incident stabilization, property preservation and social-economic impacts continue to play a role in emergency response lessons learned taught today. Response Comparison: Hurricane Katrina
Natural disasters are unfortunate events that cause damage to the surrounding environment and its inhabitants. These events can be disasters such as earthquakes, tornadoes, and hurricanes. In the article, “In Their Own Words: Resilience among Haitian Survivors of the 2010 Earthquake”, it was stated that resilience after these natural disasters is “...‘acceptance of conditions,’ as solidarity demonstrated by ‘Haitians helping Haitians’” (581). To overcome the disasters, the inhabitants of the affected area must connect as a community. It is imperative for the survival of the affected people that this is done because the connections help the people to push through the aftermath of the disaster.
The second concept, mental health staff needs to set aside traditional methods, avoid the use of mental health labels and use an active outreach approach to intervention. During the time of a disaster crisis the mental health staff very rarely offer services in the their offices, they are often in the field to support the victims of disaster crisis. The first priority following a disaster is attending to basic need, such as safety, security, communication and attention to injuries and medical needs, educating the survivors and families about effective coping strategies (Anthony K.K. Tong. Ed.D. ).
It is an ordinary process for humans to cope up with “demonstrable risks” (Masten, 2001) i.e. threats that have noticeably brought unwanted issues in one’s life. Resilience can be defined on two foundations; risks and positive adaptation. It is a quality of a person to accommodate with unfavorable alterations in life derived as a result of exposure to risks such as financial crisis, divorce, health problems or disaster. Therefore, resilience cannot exist in absence of risks.
Though the community only has a small effect on the overall picture, they are the most vulnerable to all disasters and threats. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the community to prepare one another and assess the potential risks and hazards within their community in addition to what steps are needed to address the issues. It is this preemptive response and planning, especially in locations with historically reoccurring hazards that reduce the disaster effects and overall cost. This community-based effort conducted by community groups has the, “potential to make a significant and long-lasting contributions to reducing local vulnerability and strengthening adaptive capacities” (Allen, 2006, p. 97). One example of a community-organized group is Community Emergency Response Teams or CERT.
There are a few research studies and related pieces of literature that concerns disaster preparedness of nurses. This important due to the fact that nurses is a big chunk in health workforce. Moreover, nurses are considerably the first-line health professionals in giving health care services. As such in times of disaster, preparedness on a personal and professional level is important. As a result, it will enable nurses not only to ensure safety, health and well-being of their client or patients but also themselves.
There are linkages between social deficits and vulnerabilities in support of strong indications between high social vulnerability traits and low community resiliency traits. This relationship should include consideration of systematic design and management of policies and procedure processes including resiliency planning to decrease disaster vulnerability while increasing resiliency during the process (Bergstrand, Mayer, Brumback, & Zhang, 2015). Consequently, the further established vulnerability planning and risk assessments, the more of a comprehensive span of resiliency preparedness
