1. Handbook
  2. Subjects
  3. Managing Complex Disasters

Managing Complex Disasters (MEDI90109)

Graduate courseworkPoints: 12.5On Campus (Parkville)

You’re viewing the 2025 Handbook:
Or view archived Handbooks

Overview

Availability
October
FeesLook up fees

Management of complex disasters in a healthcare setting requires specific expertise. These situations are infrequent and require a particular skill set to ensure appropriate management. Students will learn to manage complex disasters in healthcare settings. The subject will also provide students with an ethical framework for effective decision making in complex disasters, and strategies for managing activity with multiple agencies.  Students will review the impact of complex disasters on humanitarian workers and responders.

Topics covered will include:

  • Management of mass casualty events incorporating system and field aspects of response
  • Roles, responsibilities and coordination of multiple agencies
  • Humanitarian mission deployment
  • Ethical frameworks for decision making in disaster situations.

Teaching/learning formats

  • Online modules
  • Discussion boards
  • Required readings
  • Written case studies
  • Written assessments
  • Face to face workshop

Intended learning outcomes

Following successful completion of this subject, students will be able to:

  • Evaluate the role and mandates of different government agencies, and international and non-government organisations in the management of complex emergencies;
  • Assess the health care and logistical aspects of complex emergencies, including the organisation and management of a field hospital;
  • Develop an ethical framework for decision making in disaster situations; and
  • Assess the challenges, risks and associated with hazards for humanitarian and healthcare workers responding to complex disasters.

Generic skills

  • the capacity for information seeking, retrieval and evaluation
  • critical thinking and analytical skills
  • an openness to new ideas
  • the ability to communicate scientific knowledge through oral, written and web-based media

Last updated: 8 November 2024