title: Mass fatality preparedness in the death care sector.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To characterize mass fatality preparedness of the death care sector (ie, funeral industry organizations) and to determine the workforce's ability and willingness to report to duty during a hypothetical high fatality pandemic event.
  
  
  METHODS
  Anonymous, Web-based, cross-sectional survey of a national funeral industry sample. Preparedness was characterized using descriptive statistics. Factors significantly associated with ability and willingness were identified using chi-squared bivariate analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Respondents (N = 492) generally rated their organizational preparedness planning as suboptimal; only six of thirteen preparedness checklist items were typically in place. In contrast, response intentions were uniformly high; more than 80% of the respondents were willing to report to work, although high prevalence of secondary obligations might hinder this.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Preparedness strategies that address interorganizational, surge capacity, and personal emergency planning are likely to be most efficacious. STATEMENT OF CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE: Occupational medicine plays an important role in emergency preparedness and response. Funeral industry organizations could benefit from skills and resources of occupational medicine, including training, fit testing, development of plans, and coordination and hosting of planning exercises.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA. Robyn.Gershon@ucsf.edu
authors.forename: Robyn R M
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Gershon
authors.forename: Lori A
authors.initials: LA
authors.lastname: Magda
authors.forename: Halley E M
authors.initials: HE
authors.lastname: Riley
authors.forename: Jacqueline A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Merrill
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D054527:Mass Casualty Incidents; D008875:Middle Aged; D009027:Mortuary Practice / Q000458:organization & administration*; D058873:Pandemics; D055872:Surge Capacity / Q000458:organization & administration; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D000078329:Workforce; D055815:Young Adult