Community Health Nurse Career Overview

ROLE OF COMMUNITY
HEALTH NURSE
IN DISASTER MANAGEMENT

What is Disaster?
• According to World Health Organization, a
disaster can be defined “as any occurrence
that causes damage, ecological disturbance,
loss of human life, deterioration of health”
• American Red Cross defined disaster as “an
occurrence either nature or manmade that
leads to human sufferings”
• Disaster can be broadly classified into two
classes: Natural and Artificial (Man-made)
• Example of natural disasters are flood,
hurricane or earthquake; whereas man-made
disasters include nuclear explosion, fire, oil
spills etc.

Hurricane
• Hurricane is a tropical cyclone which occurs in the Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Pacific Ocean(Xi
et al, 2019)
• It is a vast rotating storm with high speed winds which is formed over the warm water bodies in the
tropical regions
• In the United States of America hurricanes are quite common, specially the cities of Florida, Texas
and North Carolina are the “hotspots” of hurricane
• Harvey was the first hurricane to strike America in 2005. The last hurricane was recorded in Texas
in 2008.

Levels of
prevention
• Primary
Participating in developing a disaster management
plan for the community
• Secondary
Assessment of victims of the disaster and provision
of care
• Tertiary
Visiting the households to uncover the dangers that
may result in additional injury to victim (such as
house fires from faulty wiring)