Emergency preparedness event to take place Monday

Next week an event will take place in town educating locals about the procedures to be taken in the event of an emergency situation in Pahrump.

The EMS Work Group of Nevada will host a Crisis Standards Care workshop on Monday at the main hall at the Bob Ruud Community Center, located at 400 N. Highway 160, from 2 p.m. until 4 p.m.

The session will help create a standard of care that’s viable to be implemented in disaster situations and public health emergencies. This measure will ensure consistent health care across Nevada if and when needed during an emergency.

“This is part of the crisis standard of care project in the state of Nevada, which is a requirement by the federal government,” said Healthcare Preparedness Program manager Malinda Southard. “After the assistant secretary for preparedness and response and require the state to have these guidance procedures in place if there were a catastrophic event such as a pandemic of influenza.

“We want to gauge public opinion on how they feel about certain aspects of that,” she said. “Like if we have limited resources, how do we decide how to use those resources in the best way possible.”

During the workshop, information will be collected via an electronic audience response system to record and show the participants’ opinions in real time. All attendees are urged to bring their cell phone or tablet to take part in the event.

“It’s going to be a series of survey questions, utilizing the ‘poll everywhere’ system,” Southard said. “You can text in your responses or you can use the Internet site to submit your responses. It will show the results in a bar graph in real time.”

There will be paper copies of the survey available for those who do not have a cell phone or tablet, or don’t wish to take part in the electronic survey.

“The info collected will be used in the introduction of the guidance document, nothing will be published as it is not scientific research,” Southard said.

To ensure all in the community that want to attend can, reasonable accommodations for those who are disabled are available, but all special arrangements must be made in advance by contacting Malinda Southard of the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health at 775-684-4039.

Contact reporter Mick Akers at makers@pvtimes.com. Follow @mickakers on Twitter.