Certificate in Healthcare Emergency and Disaster Management

Expand your knowledge of emergency management and disaster preparation, response, and recovery with these four courses. All the courses are 3-credit hours and are summarized below:

Graduate Courses

NURS 7900- Introduction to Healthcare Emergency and Disaster Management

Introduces emergency management and disaster preparation, mitigation, response, and recovery.

Course Objectives:

1. Apply common terminology used within disaster planning and emergency management.
2. Discern between the four phases of emergency management and their proper uses.
3. Compare and contrast the different agencies and levels of disaster management in the United States.
4. Critique the processes that prevent or inhibit cooperation between agencies and consequences of uncoordinated interagency cooperation on civil preparedness planning and response.
5. Synthesize the knowledge acquired to comprehend the integrated interagency disaster system.
6. Assess the legal and ethical precepts that underlie emergency and disaster management.
7. Evaluate the psychological and spiritual impact of disasters.

NURS 7910- Healthcare Disaster Preparation, Response and Recovery

Provides an understanding of healthcare preparedness, response, and recovery related to mass casualties and chemical, biological, and radiological disasters both man-made and natural.

Course Objectives:

1. Examine the scope, extent, and complexity of natural and man-made disasters and emergencies.
2. Analyze strategies for effectiveness and innovation in planning, mitigating, responding, and recovering from natural and man-made disasters and emergencies at the local, state, and national level.
3. Evaluate approaches for assessing, preventing, and controlling environmental hazards that pose risks to human health and the environment including surveillance, mass immunization and public information campaigns.
4. Utilize an ‘all-hazards’ approach to analyze chemical and biological threats.
5. Differentiate the management of the short-term and long-term psychosocial effects of disasters.

NURS 7920 Role of Nursing in Disaster Response

Provides specialized knowledge in emergency and disaster nursing care with vulnerable populations.

Course Objectives:

1. Determine effective strategies for identifying and partnering with vulnerable populations and mitigating negative consequences of disasters in these populations.
2. Apply evidence-based principles and a scientific knowledge for critical evaluation and decision making in emergency and disaster planning and preparation.
3. Synthesize interprofessional disaster literature to apply cultural diversity best practices.
4. Develop a comprehensive individual, family, community, personal and professional emergency preparedness plans in support of a culture of preparedness.

NURS 7930 Interprofessional Global Disaster and Humanitarian Response

Incorporates emergency and disaster management literature and best practices to inform an interprofessional humanitarian global disaster response.

Course Objectives:

1. Participate in the planning and execution of a tabletop simulation exercise to include interagency and interprofessional coordination.
2. Create a disaster planning exercise evaluation report utilizing the Plan, Do, Study, Act (PDSA) process.
3. Evaluate solutions and methods for improvement through after-action evaluations.
4. Synthesize information to identify a scientific problem associated with disaster preparedness and humanitarian responses.
5. Propose a methodological approach to address a disaster preparedness-related scientific problem within realistic time and resource constraints.

Student Highlight

Beth Ann Mahar

Beth Ann Mahar was drawn to the program to increase her knowledge and competency in disaster management. Mahar retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve in 2009 as a Colonel in the Nurse Corps. Continuing to work for the federal government working as a nurse at two U.S. embassies abroad and as Chief of Nursing Services at a U.S. government agency in Washington, Maher retired in March 2020. Mahar has served on teams responding to potentially hazardous substances in mail facilities, planning and evaluating disaster drills, training and instructing first responders to multiple scenarios. Mahar is currently serving as an Alexandria, Virginia CERT team member and an active member of her local Health Department Medical Reserve Corp. Mahar’s goal is to continuously update and improve her skills to serve more effectively.