5 Reasons You Should Take the Course “HICS Roles and Responsibilities: Considerations for Special Pathogens Activations”

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The Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) is an incident management system that any hospital can use to manage threats, planned events, or emergency incidents, including special pathogen activations.

NETEC has developed a course on HICS for all-hazard and special pathogens activations to help hospitals and health care agencies improve their emergency management planning, response, and recovery capabilities for planned and unplanned events, including special pathogen events. Here are five reasons why you should take this course:

1. HICS provides an organizational structure for incident management, guides the process for planning, building, and adapting that structure, and is flexible and scalable for small to large incidents, including special pathogen disease incident response.

2. HICS is a training that should be integrated into an organization’s routine training and education and used by leaders to respond to disasters as well as planned events to develop and maintain proficiency. Using HICS for every incident or planned event helps hone and maintain skills needed for large-scale incidents.

3. HICS is built around five core management functions: command, operations, planning, logistics, and finance/administration. This course covers all five functions and identifies the key roles within each one.

4. The HICS structure includes the Incident Commander (IC), Command Staff, and General Staff. It is important to consider how specific roles should be tailored to the needs of each incident, including a special pathogen activation.

5. Access quick start resources for critical tasks, including writing an Incident Action Plan (IAP) that defines the situation and roles required for an incident, and creating customized Job Action Sheets (JAS) to support the roles most likely to be activated for special pathogen response unique to your facility.

Resources for HICS

Access these resources for more information about the Hospital Incident Command System and HICS staff:

• HICS Job Action Sheets
• Additional information about the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS) can be found here, at the California Hospital Association Emergency Preparedness site.

For more information on HICS or to speak with HICS subject matter experts, please contact us.