clinical focus
showed that evacuating residents due a
natural disaster puts them at an increased
risk of death in the following months.
The study explored the risk associated
with mortality among nursing home
residents within six months of an
evacuation because of man-made or
natural disasters.
Across the 10 studies looked at, most
of which were conducted in the US and
all published between 2010 and 2015,
mortality was found to be elevated at one
month and six months post-evacuation
compared with pre-evacuation and
sheltering-in-place.
“Evacuation seems to have a negative
effect on the survival of nursing home
residents independent of the effect of the
disaster,” the authors said.
“Standard evacuation procedures
may be less applicable to this vulnerable
population because of extra challenges
they face in disasters.”
Co-author Professor Joseph Ibrahim,
from Monash University’s Health Law
and Ageing Research Unit, said decisions
surrounding evacuations need to be made
at the time, balancing all factors at play.
“To be able to do that though, you’ve
actually got to think about the situation,
about under what circumstances would
you evacuate, how would you coordinate
it, how would you get staff, what happens
when the staff aren’t available?
“There’s a whole lot of things that
happen that we tend not to think about,
and I’d say we were guilty of that when
we started off this research, because
in a sense we were looking for the
best way to evacuate. Then as we read
the work, it became clear that it is far
more complex.”
The Broward County tragedy is a
cautionary tale on multiple levels, Ibrahim
said, pointing to the importance of clearly
communicating the decisions made to the
community and understanding that it’s not
one size fits all.
He added: “We did not identify any
studies that have been published in
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Australia on the issue of emergency
evacuation, and so I think that we’re
not going to be immune from natural
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And what would you do as a provider in
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“You really need a local plan, and
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people who manage or know about
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management. It’s not something that
the majority of people in aged care, or
anyone in fact, knows very well.”
Ibrahim said the research team hopes
the study will encourage people to talk
more about evacuations in aged care and
look to develop localised plans. ■
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agedcareinsite.com.au 27