Which activity is most important for hospital staff when planning disaster preparedness and implementing the hospital's emergency operations plan (EOP)?

• A. Evaluate how other hospitals implement disaster drills.
• B. Discuss the disaster plan with small groups of employees.
• C. Instruct all staff to read the EOP disaster procedure.
• D. Have community and hospital practice disaster drills.

Answer: (D)

Disaster preparedness is about turning the emergency operations plan into practiced, coordinated action. Practicing with both community and hospital partners is essential because it validates the entire response system in a realistic context—roles, communications, resource allocation, patient flow, and mutual aid. It reveals gaps that can’t be seen by reading the plan or talking about it in small groups, and it gives staff familiarity with their responsibilities under stress within the incident command structure, triage processes, and surge management. After-action reviews from these drills drive concrete improvements, training needs, and policy changes, strengthening readiness for a real event. Reading the plan or benchmarking other hospitals doesn’t test actual execution, and discussions alone don’t exercise cross-agency coordination. Therefore, conducting joint community–hospital drills is the most important activity.