Playbook Audience
Individuals and organizations engaged in the management of pediatric surge within the context of healthcare facilities, systems, and interagency efforts. This has been divided into three broad subgroups for the playbook (see other sections below). In particular, the target audience within those organizations is those who will be responsible for managing aspects of the pediatric surge including healthcare staff, administrators/leadership, logistics personnel, and emergency managers. This intended audience includes both pediatric and non-pediatric systems.
Response Ready for Any Community
This playbook has been designed to be applicable regardless of the available resources, interagency coordination capabilities, level of response readiness, and environment of the local community. While not every response consideration, strategy, and resource will be useful for every incident and community, the content of the playbook has been deliberately developed to be as widely applicable to communities and institutions across the United States.
Playbook Overview
The WRAP-EM Pediatric Surge Playbook is designed to serve as a reference tool for pediatric surge management activities during (or in anticipation of) a surge incident. It contains operational considerations, potential response strategies, and associated resources to manage major challenges related to pediatric surge. This playbook is designed to support organizations and coordination networks operating within Incident Command System (ICS), Hospital Incident Command System (HICS), and/or local or state emergency management frameworks. As such, strategies and resources will be applicable for individual healthcare facilities, broader healthcare systems, and healthcare coordination and response entities such as Healthcare Coalitions (HCCs), Medical Operations Coordination Centers (MOCCs), Pediatric Care Coordination Centers (PCCCs), in addition to Emergency Support Function (ESF) #8 coordination systems at local and state levels.
This resource is supported by a companion tool, the WRAP-EM Pediatric Surge Resource Table, found in a section below.
Playbook Overview Video Introduction
The 2023 WRAP-EM Pediatric Surge Playbook is designed to provide considerations, potential response strategies, and supporting resources for the most common major challenges experienced by healthcare organizations and interagency groups during a pediatric surge. In particular, it takes a “just in time” and “how-to” approach in its formatting and organizational design to allow for quick reference and use during pediatric surge incidents. This video presents an overview of the context of the playbook, its purpose, scope, core features, how-to-use guide, and a guide to useful and relevant what-if scenarios for pediatric surges.
WRAP-EM Pediatric Surge - Resource Table
This resource is designed to serve the same just-in-time function as the playbook. The primary difference is this is a quick and simple resource reference tool, and it does not provide considerations or strategy recommendations. Alternatively, it focuses on providing a sortable, searchable collection of response-oriented documents, trainings, models and tools, videos and more.
This resource table is intended to serve as a companion tool to the WRAP-EM Pediatric Surge Playbook.
This manual was developed by the Western Regional Alliance for Pediatric Emergency Management (WRAP-EM). Final Version Completed July 2023. This manual is developed for educational purposes only.
Funding for WRAP-EM work is in partnership with the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. This publication was made possible by Award Number 6 U3REP190616-01-02 from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of ASPR or the Department of Health and Human Services.
The document includes evidenced-based approaches that are appropriate for most patients, but it should not replace clinical judgment. Clinical management should be adapted to meet the needs of individual patients and situations. Additionally, this document provides recommended actions that agencies and jurisdictions may want to consider in the event of a pediatric surge incident. These strategies are NOT prescriptive and thus should be considered and organized within the context of the incident and organizations responding. Furthermore, these strategies are not a legal mandate, nor do they reflect a comprehensive list of all activities a response team should consider related to pediatric surge management.