Emergency preparedness: concept development for nursing practice.

Emergency preparedness is a concept frequently referred to within medical and psychological literature and in local, state, and federal documents, yet it is not well defined. There is no published theoretical or operational definition of the term, and no conceptual analysis of the phenomena of emergency preparedness exists within the literature.Because nursing is the single largest health professional resource for response, work toward further refinement of the concept of emergency preparedness has relevance for nursing practice. This article examines and attempts to clarify the concept of emergency preparedness,especially as it applies to nursing.