| Course | NURS 6730 Public Health Nursing Leadership |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 7 |
| Paper type | Preparedness leadership plan |
| Length | About 1,160 words, 7 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | Master of Science in Nursing (MSN) |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for NURS 6730 Week 7
Deciding Before the Facts Settle: A Preparedness Leadership Plan for a Spring Flood and a Reported Lagoon Breach
Student Name
College of Nursing, Walden University
NURS 6730: Public Health Nursing Leadership
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Deciding Before the Facts Settle: A Preparedness Leadership Plan for a Spring Flood and a Reported Lagoon Breach
Scenario
After four days of rain on frozen ground, the river that crosses two of the composite district's three counties leaves its banks on a Tuesday night. By morning, about two hundred households in low-lying townships have water in their yards, several rural roads are closed and the county emergency manager has opened a school gymnasium as a shelter. At 9:40 a.m. a neighbor calls the sheriff to report that a manure storage lagoon on a dairy operation upstream has overtopped. By 11:00 a.m. the operator has told a deputy that the berm is holding, a second caller says it is not, and no one from environmental health can reach the site because the county road is under water. Most homes in the flooded townships draw drinking water from private wells.
This plan does not describe how to treat a well or manage a shelter. It sets out who leads the district's response, which decisions the health officer makes, when advisories are issued and lifted, and which resources will run out first.
Organization Under the Incident Command System
The response is organized under the Incident Command System as described in the National Incident Management System (Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], 2017). Because the incident crosses the jurisdictions of the county emergency management agency and the health district, the plan uses unified command: the county emergency manager and the district health officer share command, agree on one set of incident objectives and one incident action plan, and each keeps authority over their own agency's staff and legal powers (FEMA, 2017). Neither defers entirely to the other. The emergency manager leads on evacuation, roads and shelter operations; the health officer leads on drinking water, food safety, communicable disease and the health of people in the shelter.
Within the district, the community health nursing supervisor serves as the public health lead for shelter health and for staffing, the environmental health supervisor leads well and lagoon assessment, and the preparedness coordinator serves as liaison to the county emergency operations center. The district's public information role is folded into a joint information function with the county so that residents hear one set of instructions.
Decision Authority
Most confusion in the first day of an incident is about who may decide what. Table 1 separates the health officer's decisions into three groups.
Table 1
Decisions by Level of Authority
| Health officer decides alone | Decided in unified command | Deferred to the state |
|---|---|---|
| Issue and lift private well advisories | Incident objectives for each operational period | Emergency declarations and state resource requests |
| Food service closures and reopening | Shelter opening, location and closing | Enforcement against the lagoon operator |
| Assignment of district nurses and sanitarians | Joint public messages and their timing | Laboratory surge through the state public health laboratory |
| Communicable disease measures in the shelter | Requests for mutual aid staff | Any order affecting livestock movement |
Placing lagoon enforcement with the state reflects how animal feeding operations are usually permitted, and it keeps the district's attention on the people exposed rather than on the operator. The health officer still documents what the district observes so the state has it.
Advisory Triggers Written in Advance
Floodwater can carry fecal organisms and agricultural runoff into wells, especially shallow wells and those whose casings or caps are submerged, and a scoping review found that flooding has repeatedly been linked to groundwater contamination and enteric illness among people relying on private supplies (Andrade et al., 2018). Studies of flooding after Hurricane Floyd showed that animal feeding operations often sit in or beside floodplains, so a lagoon failure during a flood is a plausible rather than exotic event (Wing et al., 2002). Waiting for laboratory confirmation would leave households without guidance for days, and the road closure means no sample can be collected from the lagoon site at all.
The plan therefore writes its triggers before the event, as if-then rules. If floodwater has reached a wellhead, or a household reports a change in water color, odor or taste, then the district advises that household not to drink the water and to use bottled water or boil water only where no chemical contamination is suspected. If a lagoon failure is reported upstream of a township and cannot be ruled out within six hours, then the advisory extends to every well in the mapped flood area of that township. The advisory is lifted for a household when floodwater has receded from the wellhead, the well has been disinfected according to state guidance and a certified laboratory result shows no coliform bacteria. The lagoon-based township advisory is lifted when the state confirms the structure held or when sampling shows no contamination.
What Fails First
Nursing staff will run out first. The district has a small nursing staff, and the flood creates two demands at once: shelter health, including medication access for residents who left home without prescriptions, and the routine clinics and home visits that do not stop because the river rose. A study of health care workers' willingness and ability to report during disasters found that both vary by type of event and that family obligations, including child and elder care, are among the most common barriers (Qureshi et al., 2005). Several district nurses live in the flooded townships. The plan assumes some will be unable to come in and sets three rules: routine clinics in the unaffected county continue at reduced hours, home visits are triaged to families with infants or recent discharges, and the nursing supervisor requests mutual aid nurses through unified command by the end of the first operational period rather than after staff are exhausted.
Laboratory capacity will fail second. Well sampling after flooding produces a surge the district's contract laboratory cannot absorb. The Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities treat surge staffing and laboratory testing as distinct capabilities that jurisdictions plan for in advance (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2018). The plan asks the state public health laboratory for surge support on the first day and prioritizes samples from homes with infants, pregnant residents and people with weakened immune systems.
Continuity of Operations
Essential district functions continue through the incident. Communicable disease reporting and follow-up continue without interruption; the epidemiologist works from home if the office is inaccessible. Vital records and nonurgent permit reviews pause for up to one week. Food service inspections move from routine schedules to post-flood reopening inspections. The district's phone line forwards to the county emergency operations center when staff are in the field, and the joint information function posts one daily update.
The plan names what it cannot promise: the district cannot test every well in the flood area within the first week, cannot staff the shelter around the clock without mutual aid and cannot compel the lagoon operator to allow access. Saying so in the plan prepares the board and the public for the choices that follow.
References
Andrade, L., O'Dwyer, J., O'Neill, E., & Hynds, P. (2018). Surface water flooding, groundwater contamination, and enteric disease in developed countries: A scoping review of connections and consequences. Environmental Pollution, 236, 540-549. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2018.01.104
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2018). Public health emergency preparedness and response capabilities: National standards for state, local, tribal, and territorial public health. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2017). National incident management system (3rd ed.). U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Qureshi, K., Gershon, R. R. M., Sherman, M. F., Straub, T., Gebbie, E., McCollum, M., Erwin, M. J., & Morse, S. S. (2005). Health care workers' ability and willingness to report to duty during catastrophic disasters. Journal of Urban Health, 82(3), 378-388. https://doi.org/10.1093/jurban/jti086
Wing, S., Freedman, S., & Band, L. (2002). The potential impact of flooding on confined animal feeding operations in eastern North Carolina. Environmental Health Perspectives, 110(4), 387-391. https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp.02110387
Reading the NURS 6730 Week 7 instructions
Preparedness prompts in Week 7 usually ask you to describe your agency's leadership role in a specific emergency: how command is organized, what decisions you would make, how you would communicate and how essential services would continue. Plans often run four to six pages. Keep the scenario short and specific. Use the Incident Command System correctly, including unified command when jurisdictions overlap. Separate the decisions your role can make alone from those that are shared or belong to another level of government. Write triggers for protective actions in advance, with the conditions that would end them. Identify which resources will fail first and how you would respond, and cover the functions your agency must keep running.
How the NURS 6730 Week 7 example is put together
A two-paragraph scenario ends on the conflicting lagoon reports. The organization section applies the National Incident Management System, describes unified command through the two officials who share it and names the district's internal roles. Table 1 sorts decisions into three columns. The trigger section cites Andrade and colleagues on flooding and groundwater contamination and Wing and colleagues on animal feeding operations in floodplains, then states two if-then advisories and their lifting conditions. A section on failure cites Qureshi and colleagues on workers' ability and willingness to report during disasters and CDC's preparedness capabilities on laboratory surge. Continuity of operations and a paragraph of plain limits close the plan.
Where the marks sit in the NURS 6730 Week 7 rubric
Emergency leadership plans are graded on clarity of command and quality of decisions. Correct use of ICS and unified command earns a structural share, and a decision table showing where authority stops makes that share easy to award. Decision-making under uncertainty is often the largest block, so triggers written in advance with conditions to lift them score well. Anticipating failure earns separate credit when the writer names specific resources and responses rather than hoping for surge. Continuity of essential functions is usually its own criterion. Evidence about the hazard should be accurate and cited in APA. A plan that names its own limits tends to read as realistic, which many instructors reward.
NURS 6730 Week 7 help: mistakes that cost marks
Preparedness plans lose marks when they recite the ICS chart without saying who decides what. Another loss is waiting for confirmation before any protective action, with no discussion of the cost of delay. Some plans assume staff will all report and never plan for absences. Others describe a response in clinical detail outside the leadership role the prompt assigns. Keep the scenario brief, use unified command where jurisdictions overlap, sort decisions by authority, write triggers with lifting conditions, name what fails first and plan continuity. If your prompt supplies its own scenario or ICS role, the desk can build the plan from that position. Base any hazard detail on your jurisdiction's own emergency plan where you can.
Get a NURS 6730 Week 7 example written to your instructions
Whatever the scenario in your Week 7 prompt, a flood, a spill or an outbreak, send it with the rubric and anything your agency's emergency plan already assigns. The plan settles who decides each call and writes triggers that act before facts are confirmed. Delivered in 24-48 hours; the first sample carries no fee.
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NURS 6730 Week 7 questions, answered
Why issue advisories before test results confirm contamination?
Because the plan treats delay as a decision with consequences of its own. When flooding covers wellheads, waiting for laboratory confirmation leaves households without guidance for days, so the example issues advisories on stated conditions and names what would lift them. The reasoning concerns leadership under uncertainty, not water safety itself. Your scenario may call for different triggers, set by your agency's own emergency plan.
What does unified command mean in practice?
Under the Incident Command System, unified command lets officials from agencies with jurisdiction share command of one incident, setting common objectives while each keeps authority over its own agency. The example pairs the county emergency manager with the health officer. Your prompt may place you in a different ICS role, such as a section chief, and a custom plan is written from that position instead.
Is the flood scenario based on a real event?
No. The river, the lagoon and the shelter are composites of features typical of rural flooding, and the plan describes no real place or response. Your own prompt may supply a scenario or ask for one drawn from your jurisdiction's hazard assessment. The custom plan builds on whichever scenario applies and keeps its decisions at the leadership level.
Where can I find a free NURS 6730 Week 7 sample paper?
The whole preparedness plan, decision table, advisory triggers, failure analysis and continuity section, is open on this page without charge. A plan for the scenario your section assigns can be requested.
What does the NURS 6730 Week 7 plan expect to fail first?
Nursing staff, pulled between shelter health and routine clinics while some nurses live in the flooded townships, so the plan requests mutual aid in the first operational period.