Emergency Planning

The NHS needs to plan for, and respond to, a wide range of incidents and emergencies that could affect health or patient care. These could be anything from extreme weather conditions to an outbreak of an infectious disease or a major transport accident. The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) requires NHS organisations, and providers of NHS-funded care, to show that they can deal with such incidents while maintaining services.

This programme of work is referred to in the health community as emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR). New arrangements for local health EPRR form some of the changes the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is making to the health system in England

Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital has robust plans and arrangements in place to deal with any potential incidents that it may be faced with, to provide the best treatment to our patients and families and to safeguard our services.

What can you do to help yourself in emergencies?

If you find yourself in the middle of a major incident, your common sense and instincts will usually tell you what to do. However, it is important to:

Make sure 999 has been called if people are injured or if there is a threat to life
Not put yourself or others in danger
Follow the advice of the emergency services
Try to remain calm and think before acting, and try to reassure others
Check for injuries – remember to help yourself before attempting to help others

If you are not involved in the incident, but are close by or believe you may be in danger, in most cases the advice is:

Go inside a safe building
Stay inside until you are advised to do otherwise
Tune in to local radio or TV for more information

Of course, there are always going to be particular occasions when you should not ‘go in’ to a building, for example if there is a fire. Otherwise:

Go in, stay in, tune in.

ICE? In Case of Emergency

Have you put ‘ICE’ in your mobile?

Storing ‘ICE’ along with a name and telephone number will enable the emergency services to quickly contact someone for you in the event of an emergency.

Eight out of ten people in the UK carry no next of kin details yet 80 per cent carry a mobile phone, most of whom have it on them all the time. There is no simpler way of letting the emergency services know who to contact should you be involved in an accident than by using ICE.

Standing for In Case of Emergency, ICE will allow the emergency crews to quickly contact a nominated person who can be informed of the incident.

Emergency Planning - Useful Websites

Emergency Preparedeness, Resilience and Response

NHS service providers are required to produce evidence that they meet the requirements detailed in NHS England’s Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response (EPRR) Core Standards.

In the 2022/23 EPRR Assurance process, LiverpooL Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust declared a compliance level of Substantially Compliant.