Three Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina:
Preparing for Potential Employee Health Crises

At Corporate Wellness, one on-going objective is to insure that our clients learn from every employee health situation. Obviously, the first goal is to prevent repetition of mistakes within an organization. But this also allows our clients to improve based on each other's experiences.

Throughout the process of assisting our clients and their employees with locating first aid supplies, acquiring sanitation equipment, administering vaccinations and beginning critical incident debriefing, we kept careful notes on the employee health issues that occurred. The notes were initially intended to drive checklists for follow up on hundreds of details involved in delivering occupational health services to our clients and their employee. Where was the vaccine? Could the nurse going to one client's local office stop in at another client's nearby plant? Was it Fed Ex or UPS that could get medical supplies to that zip code? When was the additional vaccine order due to arrive? Could we put in two extra boxes of respirators from our supply?

As we reviewed these notes to make sure we were attending to the details, several important employee health lessons emerged. Now that most of the operational issues have been addressed, taking the time to look at those lessons is equally as important.

Lesson 1: The potential employee health issues in a disaster are very different from day to day employee health issues. We routinely deal with positive drug screens, back or knee injuries and fitness for duty exams. But what about a lack of running water to clean up after handling hazardous materials, injuries resulting from employees who haven't slept in days, or employees working with open wounds.

Realistically, only a small subset of employees needs to comply with OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogen Standard before Katrina. But, after Katrina, employees in locations that had not previously handled goods soiled with blood or bodily fluids were handling them on a daily basis.

The basic lesson - In the aftermath of a disaster, employee health issues will be more numerous, complicated and potentially serious than imagined.

Lesson 2: You may never be able to identify every potential employee health issue that might arise. But you can categorize them in order to begin to think about how you would handle each category or group of employee health problems.

In Katrina's aftermath, health issues ranged from shortages of vaccine to ill employees and their families physically living in their battered work locations. To meet employee health needs, we needed vaccinations, respirators that didn't require respirator clearance programs (no time for personally fitting respirators), first aid supplies and lots and lots of hand sanitizer. We needed nurses, delivery mechanisms for medical supplies outside of our normal shipping processes and pre-approved large credit lines with medical supplies houses in other parts of the country.

Categories can be as simple as injuries, illness and mental health and can be expanded from there. They can be revised as new incidents occur and the challenges met. But once they are defined, you can begin to think about how you might begin to address each group of issues. This leads to Lesson 3.

Lesson 3: The time to identify occupational health resources is now - not when a crisis occurs. It is weeks, months or years before. For those employers who had existing relationships with local or national occupational health providers, many health resources were in place within hours to help their employees and their families.

Identifying and building relationships with strategic partner, who will be available to you 24 /7, 365 days a year wherever and whenever you may need them takes time, money and commitment.

Although most occupational health providers tried to help every company that contacted us, our first allegiance had to be to our clients and their employees when resources were scarce. For employers who had good occupational health programs and practices already in place, expanding them to locations that didn't need them previously (like ones who didn't handle blood or bodily fluids before) was easier than for those employers who didn't have these programs in place. We were able to use the resources normally used only for one industry for others who had new needs. Strong relationships and good communication are key.

Although we hope to never handle employee health crises of the complexity and dimensions of Katrina, taking the time to study the lessons learned is an important part of the overall recovery process.

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