A disaster response nurse’s role is to provide preparation, care, and treatment in emergencies ranging from natural disasters, such as earthquakes and floods, to mass shootings and other human-made crises. Being a disaster response nurse involves working under pressure and being able to make decisions and problem-solve quickly, often with few resources.
If you’re wondering whether disaster nursing is hard and what disaster nursing is like, this blog post will give you an overview of the realities of being a disaster response nurse. By reading first-hand accounts from disaster nurses, you’ll be able to determine if this nursing specialty is the right fit for you.
Why Choose Disaster Response Nursing
While it can be an incredibly tolling nursing specialty, disaster response nursing can be just as rewarding. Being able to support individuals and communities during emergencies can be fulfilling. In fact, many nurses—as seen in the anecdotes below—cite this as one of the reasons they stay in this specialty, despite the stressors.
To thrive as a disaster nurse, you’ll tap into many of the same characteristics that are common amongst nurses—compassion, empathy, critical thinking, commitment to patients’ safety and rights, and resilience. In particular, traits of perseverance and stamina are critical for emergency response nurses working in crisis settings where they have few resources and are expected to work long shifts in unfamiliar environments, such as being dispatched in emergency humanitarian settings with organizations such as the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders.
Here are some reasons why you may choose to specialize as a disaster response nurse:
- You thrive in fast-paced, chaotic environments and can think quickly on your feet and make decisions accordingly.
- You feel your calling is supporting people in some of their most vulnerable moments.
- You’re open to relocating for short-term assignments, which may include being dispatched during humanitarian emergencies such as war, conflict, or natural disasters.
The Realities of Disaster Response Nursing: Is Disaster Response Nursing Hard?
As a disaster response nurse, you must have the tools and coping skills to handle difficult situations. If you choose to pursue this path, do so with the knowledge that it may personally impact your stress levels and even cause trauma. According to one study, 20 percent of nurses who responded to Hurricane Katrina had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Additionally, in 100 percent of cases, hospitals did not offer nurses Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM).
To get a glimpse of what disaster response nursing is like, we’ve compiled the following accounts of disaster response nurses. Their perspectives will help you make a judgment on whether disaster response nursing is hard—mentally, emotionally, or physically.
Claire Liszkay from Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital travels around the world as a disaster response nurse. Here’s what she told Windy City Live about how she copes with the challenges of the role:
“I don’t know [how I maintain normalcy after emergencies]. Sometimes you see those things and you see those emotions and I imagine to myself: ‘I’m just going to put that in my back pocket.’... I worry about my family. I worry about my husband. With something like Ebola, [when I went to Sierra Leone], I knew going into it what the risks were—just like you know when walking out the door what the risks of the flu are.
I applied to be a nurse a little bit on the bit of a whim, but somehow I found the best possible career I could have found.
Something that always strikes me is how kind people are when they find themselves in these situations. I was in North Carolina last year when Hurrican Florence hit and I remember standing outside the shelter and there were people driving up and down in their cars full of food and water and all kinds of supplies and I remember thinking: they’re people whose homes are probably destroyed too, but they’re just thinking of their neighbors.”
Jamla Rizek has worked as a flight nurse, emergency room (ER) nurse, and disaster response nurse. She is part of a federal emergency response team and has experience in over twenty emergency departments in numerous countries. In an interview with the research publisher Frontiers, Jamla described the most challenging and rewarding aspects of her work.
“Knowing that the work is never really done and there is only so much you can do… has got to be the hardest thing. The work is not done but you do your job and then that’s it. You have to say, ‘I did what I was meant to. It may not have fixed the problem.’ Sometimes it feels like placing a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. Deployments are usually about 2 weeks on average—sometimes longer. I have personally done over 7 deployments in the last 2 years. Sometimes it is a little difficult to juggle the work with a full-time job.
The satisfying feeling [is what I love most about this work]—similar to working in an emergency department. You put a smile on someone’s face, or an elderly patient holds your hands and thanks you. The mission isn’t always to fix the problem, but rather it is often to provide support until other resources arrive. So, it can feel like you failed but those little impacts end up being significant for the people you are helping.”
Final Thoughts on Choosing Disaster Response Nursing
As the first-hand accounts above show, working in disaster response has its challenges—from working in short-term settings, which feel like Band-Aid solutions, to the stress and trauma that come with working in emergencies. However, being a disaster response nurse is also rewarding as nurses are some of the first responders to support in crises and also experience the beauty of humanity coming together during difficult circumstances.
To learn more about disaster response nursing, check out Nursa’s comprehensive guide on disaster response nursing here, which covers everything you need to know about this nursing specialty: salary information, certifications, why to choose disaster response nursing, and more.
