A Framework for Analyzing Performance Under Pressure in Diverse Healthcare Settings in Ecuador

Abstract

Using indigenous techniques to reduce the dependency on outside resources. Background: Andhra Pradesh (AP) is a state that has suffered the most from the adverse effects of severe cyclones, floods, and drought. It is estimated that about 90% of AP's total territory are vulnerable to tropical storms, floods, and related hazards, while the coastal belt is even more vulnerable to natural disasters, and the state's population is compounded by the recurrent impact of disasters. Methods: Vulnerability Analysis, Situational Analysis, Participatory Vulnerability Capacities Assessment, Hazard Hunt Capacity building. Results: The project is a model to all the vulnerable communities; capacities of vulnerable communities are increased and confident of combating the disaster situations. Innovative elements and results: Horizontal trainings by trained taskforce members in other vulnerable villages are conducted on their own initiation. Cost Effectiveness: There is no need to purchase anything from outside to implement this initiative at vulnerable villages. Workshop with the Education Department officials: Workshops with the department and regular one-on-one meetings have been organized. Lessons Learned: Flexibility and patience in order to survive and grow the structures, admit to mistakes, and correct them. Conclusion: CHALLENGES: Initially, there was no response from the government as well as from the local communities. How to improve similar initiatives in the future? A similar intervention can be implemented in other villages overcoming the above mentioned challenges, involving the trained children and task force groups of this project. Replication: This intervention can be replicated in any part of the world, at a vulnerable village or school based on the type of disaster-but same methodology can be adopted for any type of disaster. This can be replicated to any context either for Tsunami or Cyclone prone, floods or flash floods, fire accident zone, or in a peacetime.

Building a Taxonomy to Understand Health Care Worker’s Response to Workplace ‘Pressure’ in Complex, Volatile and Emergency Situations

“…In our view, there is a need to step back from the concept of ‘stress’ and to revisit workplace pressures in a broader sense in order to develop a rich and complex understanding of diverse pressures, their genesis and their consequences and to model these events in order to permit more sophisticated interventions. 2 , 12 , 13 For this reason, we chose not to use the term ‘stress’ as the lynchpin of this project; instead, we opted for the less restrictive term ‘pressure’. Further, rather than approaching the research with the term already (possibly too narrowly) defined, we felt there was a need to approach people in the workplace to unpack and catalogue their understandings of what might constitute pressure for them.…”