Emergency Planning

In a hospital, when something goes wrong, there's a code team, overhead pages, and a building full of people trained to respond. In an outpatient clinic, a dental office, or a small private practice, it might just be you and a patient in the chair.

Severe weather. A fire. An active shooter. A patient who collapses in the waiting room. These events are rare, and that's exactly the problem. Because they rarely happen, we rarely prepare. We assume someone else will step up, or that it won't happen here. 

Athletic trainers learn this early: you don't build an emergency action plan because emergencies are common. You build it because the time to practice is not when it's happening. In fact, the less often something happens, the more you need to practice it. You'll never get the reps any other way. 

Hoping it never happens is not a strategy.

If the last time you thought about your emergency plan was at onboarding, take this as your cue to ask your leadership team when you'll practice it next. If you're the leader, put it on the calendar.