ICN Disaster Nursing Competencies

ICN Framework of Disaster Nursing Competencies

• The International Council of Nurses (ICN) is a global federation of national nurses' associations, representing over 28 million nurses worldwide.
• Founded in 1899, it's the world's first and largest international nursing organization.
• ICN's headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland.
• ICN works for quality nursing care globally, promoting sound health policies, advancing nursing knowledge, and ensuring a competent and satisfied nursing workforce.

Disaster Nursing Competencies

• The competencies were developed in 2009, analyzing existing competency frameworks in public health, mental health, emergency management, and nursing.
• Two key documents influenced their development: "Educational Competencies for Registered Nurses Responding to Mass Casualty Incidents" (2003) and "Core Competencies Required for Disaster Nursing" (2004).
• The "disaster management continuum" (prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery/rehabilitation) is used as the framework for organizing competencies.

Prevention/Mitigation Competencies

• Disaster risk reduction involves analyzing and reducing disaster causal factors (exposure to hazards, vulnerability reduction, land and environmental management, and early warning).
• Disease prevention strives to avoid diseases in individuals by treatment or measures before disease onset.
• Health promotion empowers people to improve their health.
  • Risk reduction and disease prevention steps involve using epidemiological data, collaboration, planning, and identifying vulnerable populations to mitigate challenges and implement risk reduction measures.

Preparedness Competencies

• Understanding relevant disaster terminology, phases of disaster management (prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery/rehabilitation), government and organizational roles in planning and response, community disaster plans, and national/international response plans is crucial.
• Competencies include recognizing the role in workplace disaster plans, contributing to plan development, including vulnerable populations in the plan, understanding the role of nurses in a multidisciplinary team, and participation in preparedness development of disaster policies.

Response Competencies

• Assessing the disaster situation and nursing needs.
• Providing physical and psychological support to survivors and responders.
• Identifying the need for decontamination, isolation, and quarantine.
• Recognizing health needs of responders and survivors.
• Implementing care in accordance with accepted scientific principles and adapting standards and care based on resources available.

Recovery/Rehabilitation Competencies

• Developing plans for meeting short- and long-term physical and psychological needs of survivors.
• Assisting survivors with additional needs to appropriate resources.
• Involving survivors in disease and injury prevention and health maintenance and recovery.
• Working with the health care community in supporting recovery.
• Collecting data about disaster response for evaluation, improving community disaster response, resolving issues related to response, and facilitating community health care resumption.

Additional Key Aspects

• The framework accounts for the needs of vulnerable populations (pregnant women, children, disabled individuals).
• Includes considerations for communication, information sharing, education, psychological care, community care, and legal and ethical frameworks.
• Recognizes the importance of interprofessional collaboration and the needs of communities.
• Differentiates between three levels of disaster nurses (general, advanced practice or specialized nurses).
• An updated version of the ICN competencies (Version 2.0) now contains eight domains focusing on preparation, communication, incident management, safety, assessment, intervention, recovery, and law/ethics.