Key Recommendations Can Be Used to Shape Outbreak Preparedness by First Responders

Preparedness is considered essential for healthcare organizations to respond effectively to outbreaks. In the current study Belfroid, et al. (2017) sought to capture the views of first responders on what they consider key recommendations for high-quality preparedness. Furthermore, the researchers identified the recommendations with the highest urgency from the perspective of first responders.

They chose a multistep approach using a systematic Delphi procedure. Previously extracted recommendations from scientific literature were presented to a national and two international expert panels. We asked the experts to score the recommendations based on relevance for high-quality preparedness. In addition we asked them to choose the 10 most urgent recommendations.

Starting with 80 recommendations from scientific literature, 49 key recommendations were selected by both international expert panels. Differences between both panels were mainly on triage protocols. In addition, large differences were found in the selection of the 10 most urgent recommendations.

In this study infectious disease experts selected a set of key recommendations representing high quality preparedness and specified which ones should be given the highest urgency when preparing for a future crisis. These key recommendations can be used to shape their preparedness activities.

Reference: Belfroid E, et al. Which recommendations are considered essential for outbreak preparedness by first responders? BMC Infectious Diseases. 2017;17:195