NURS FPX 6020 Assessment 3 Communication Handout and Narrative

Student name

Capella University

NURS FPX6020 A3

Prof.

Submission date

Communication Handout and Narrative

Hurricane Helene caused flooding in Western North Carolina, which left much of the infrastructure in ruins and, therefore, isolated many communities without access to hospitals and clean water sources, as well as contaminated local water supplies (Amorim et al., 2025). Although the disaster response strategy dealt with the risk of contracting an infection due to these conditions, it can only be used effectively when it is properly communicated to people who are to implement the plan. The after-action report of the response to Hurricane Helene reports that there were problems of communication between agencies part of the response and that there was no shared situational awareness among the coordination centers in the response. To aid in filling that gap, this assignment is created. The Disaster Response Team Member Handout is a set of practical approaches to cooperating effectively in difficult situations; these literature descriptions explain the reasons, facts, and assumptions behind the individual recommendation that was given in the same handout.

Facilitating Communication

Communication is the key to the success of any emergency response plan. The Hurricane Helene (2002) infection control plan was based on the communication between multiple stakeholders such as the public health nurses, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) liaisons, local health departments, and local community volunteers (Peterson et al., 2024). Failure of these various groups to clearly communicate information resulted in failure of even the most comprehensive plans. As an example, various coordination centers failed to interact properly in terms of up-to-date patient conditions, and it postponed the decision-making process on the location of medical assets (Youn et al., 2022). To help overcome these communication breakdowns, the attached handout will give teams the tools that can help in the transfer of information between one group of people and another. These resources consist of: a typical patient handoff checklist; a daily-briefing-plan; and prepared verbal communications to use in meetings. Besides this, the story describes the process by which the recommendations on the development of the tools were established and the reasons that led to the choice of the tools.

Team Dynamics

Team dynamics is one of the key elements in the efficacy of the disaster response plan. The greater the degree of trust and role clarity among the members of the team, the quicker the response and the fewer the errors committed in case of a calamity. On the other hand, in circumstances where the two fail, then patients may be put at risk. It turned out to be the case with the after-action review of Hurricane Helene, where the lack of communication among the primary, secondary, and backup communication channels impeded the crucial response in North Carolina, and no common situational awareness existed between the command centers; the isolated mountain communities that were cut off due to the effects of hurricane damage (Shen et al., 2022). As a result of these findings, a decision was made that the Disaster Response Team Member Handout must focus on a high level of trust between partner agencies and a high degree of role clarity as compared to all other team dynamics, i.e., conflict resolution style, since those agencies that failed to establish an established working relationship were less successful in organizing operations than those agencies that had established relationships. One such partnership that worked was that between the Buncombe County Health Department and Burke County Health Department and the Public Health Program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Asheville (Scalise et al., 2025). Their cooperation was judged to be successful in large part due to the fact that they had a working relationship prior to the disaster. This shows that trust and role clarity are of greater importance than any one method of communication alone.

Assumptions

This assessment is based on a number of different assumptions. One of the assumptions is that emergency plans that the agencies involved already have are appropriate. The other assumption is that the employees would have undergone some disaster response training, though very little. Another assumption is that this communications equipment, such as telephones and radios, will partially function during the disaster response period (Coch et al., 2022). Should any of these assumptions be untrue, for example, if an agency doesn’t have previous experience working with FEMA, then further preparatory measures would need to be put into place before any of the strategies contained within the handout would be accepted and implemented.

Tools and Techniques of Interprofessional Communication

It is not just about having good intentions, but teams need to have viable means through which they communicate effectively during a crisis. The literature review revealed that there is a range of potential collaboration tools that team members can use to collaborate effectively, such as electronic medical records (EMR), frequent briefings, situation, background, assessment, and recommendation (SBAR) handoff tools, and collaborative training activities (Browning et al., 2025). Of these options, the use of joint training exercises proved to be the most effective. According to the Helene review, regular meetings of section chiefs with external bodies were significant in ensuring preparedness. The members of the team should train on how to communicate with each other before a crisis occurs so that they acquire the habits that would make them succeed in other circumstances of crisis. Possessing a plan on paper is not synonymous with making the team ready to execute the same plan as a collective team.

Tools for structured handoff, such as SBAR, are also recommended to share patient information between agencies. With these kinds of tools, they are effective since all the people involved in receiving handoffs have a common method, or structure, of conveying information. In the situation when a patient is transferred to a FEMA medical team, both parties are conversant with the information that is supposed to be conveyed (Newman & Leochico, 2022). This minimizes the chances of overlooking important details in the period when there was a large number of patients and less time. Some of the tools that did not make it into this set of final recommendations are tools for data-sharing software. Data-sharing software works great in hospitals under normal circumstances, but does not work well in disaster situations due to issues with power and physical structures. The scope of the recommendations is on structured handoff tools by means of being low-technology, simple systems that can be used in poor conditions.

Assumptions

In doing the assessment, it is assumed that all the agencies involved are willing to devote time and resources to collaborate with joint training prior to a disaster and not only after it has happened. The other assumption is that staff retention will be high enough to make the training received worthwhile (Park et al., 2024). And even the best communication tools will not be used regularly without the three fundamental assumptions, and this is in spite of the fact that they are only used during a real event.

Conclusion

The aim of this handout is to facilitate trust building and the establishment of well-defined roles among team members and to establish communication tools in advance of disaster occurrence, rather than during a disaster. Some of the recommendations included in this handout are founded on actual failures and successes that were encountered in Hurricane Helene. This story gives the rationale behind such suggestions so that other practitioners will be comfortable with such tactics and can modify them in order to suit their own teams. Strategies that are adopted by teams to achieve these goals will be better placed to react fast to the next disaster, as well as provide services to the most vulnerable in the affected enclave.