Stop 5 of 8 · Weekly
Outbreak response and the tabletop
Write the plan from the facility profile, run a tabletop where Claude plays the outbreak and argues back, and feed every gap the exercise exposed into the next version.
The plan nobody wrote
Most of Dr. Salma's clients have an outbreak plan because a regulation says they must, and most of those plans are a photocopy with a different facility name on the front. The plan that works is built out of the facility profile: this many units, this staffing pattern at night, this laboratory turnaround, this local health department, this administrator who is on holiday for two weeks in August.
The profile is already in the client Project. That is what makes the plan writeable in an afternoon instead of a fortnight, and it is why the profile in stop one has no people in it and every operational detail you can think of.
What a usable plan has that a photocopy does not
- A named role, not a name, for every decision, with a second role behind it after hours.
- Thresholds. Two cases in one unit in a week is different from one case in each of four.
- The notification list with who calls whom, in what order, and what they say.
- The measures in tiers, so the facility escalates rather than choosing between nothing and closing.
- A line on what the facility stops doing, because every plan asks staff to do more with the same people.
Claude plays the outbreak
The tabletop is where this stop earns its place. Dr. Salma gives Claude the plan and the profile and tells it to run the scenario as an unfolding situation, one injection at a time, and to press when an answer is vague. She answers as the facility would answer. Every question she cannot answer from the plan is a gap, and the gaps are the output.
Try this
Using the facility profile in this Project, draft an outbreak response plan for a respiratory pathogen. Structure it as roles and thresholds: who decides what, at what case count, with an after hours alternate for every role. Include tiered control measures from enhanced monitoring up to unit restriction, the notification order, and what routine work the facility suspends at each tier. Leave a bracketed blank wherever the facility must supply a local contact or a number I have not given you.
You are running a tabletop exercise against the plan above. Play the outbreak. Give me one injection at a time, starting at hour zero with two residents on one unit, and wait for my decision before advancing. Push back when my answer does not name a role or a threshold from the plan. Do not tell me the right answer. After eight injections, stop and list every decision point where my answer came from my own head rather than the plan.
Here is the gap list from the tabletop. For each gap, draft the paragraph that closes it in the plan, in the same structure of role, threshold and alternate. Where a gap cannot be closed by writing, because it needs staffing or equipment the facility does not have, say so and write it as a line for the administrator's report instead. [paste the gap list]
Draft a family notification letter template for this facility, to be held in the plan and filled in when needed. It states in general terms that cases of an illness have been identified, what the facility is doing, what visitors are asked to do, and who to call with questions. Bracketed blanks for the two facts the facility supplies. No case detail, no unit names, no numbers, and nothing that promises an outcome.