Nurse staffing and supportive nurse work environments should be at the core of hospital’s extreme heat emergency preparedness, an editorial from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research said.
“Extreme heat is no longer just a public health issue — it is an immediate hospital preparedness priority that requires treating nurse staffing and supportive work environments as essential emergency infrastructure,” the authors said in an Oct. 5.
The editorial, published in Public Health Nursing, argues that health system heat-related illness management requires nurses to have the capacity and resources needed to deliver timely care and continuous surveillance during heat events. Managing heat-related illness requires immediate, resource-intensive nursing surveillance to prevent complications such as multiorgan failure and rapid patient deterioration, the authors wrote. Insufficient staffing and inadequate support can severely limit a health system’s ability to deliver standard-of-care treatments during sudden volume surges caused by heat waves.
To prepare, the authors recommend hospitals leaders to incorporate nurse staffing and workplace environment investments directly into disaster preparedness planning.
The editorial comes as record-breaking temperatures and heat-related emergency department visits continue to rise across the U.S., according to the news release. Its senior author is Eileen Lake, PhD, RN, associate director of the center.
