Kristopher Prickett, Director of Healthcare Services at Tidal Basin was recently featured as an author in the Journal of Emergency Management for his publication titled, “Plain language emergency alert codes: The importance of direct impact statements in hospital emergency alerts.”
Kristopher joined the Tidal Basin team in 2018 and has extensive knowledge in disaster preparedness and recovery as a professional emergency manager, law enforcement officer and firefighter with over a decade of experience. Mr. Prickett served as an emergency manager for a major metropolitan healthcare system coordinating the system response to the U.S. Ebola event and multiple declared disasters as well as implementing the first National Weather Service Storm Ready designated healthcare facility in Metro Atlanta. He has demonstrated high levels of documented success in qualifying and quantifying healthcare risk and mitigation needs in inpatient, outpatient and behavioral health clinical settings with a focus on all hazards emergency / business continuity planning. Kristopher also has extensive experience designing and implementing Active Shooter training programs for healthcare facilities.
His recent publication discusses the following:
“The nature of an emergency is not predictable, and no two emergencies are alike. In response to this unpredictable nature, healthcare facilities across the nation have adopted a system of emergency codes to notify staff of an emergent situation, often without alerting patients and visitors to the crises. However, the system of emergency codes varies significantly within most states and even within healthcare coalition regions. This variation in codes leads to not only the potential for staff confusion, considering many healthcare providers work within multiple healthcare centers, but also decreases the amount of transparency a healthcare center projects to its patients and visitors. The research conducted as part of this study indicated that an overwhelming majority of healthcare professionals would prefer voluntary plain language emergency code standardization to the current individual code systems.”
To read the article in its entirety, visit the Journal of Emergency Management’s website here.
