| For Immediate Release | Contact: Joyce Faria Brennan |
| September 6, 2005 | 508-961-5270 |
| brennanj@southcoast.org | |
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Nancy Edwards, MD, Chairwoman of the Department of Emergency Medicine, and Robert B. Quirk BA, RN, Nurse Manager of Emergency Services, joined some 70 health care professionals from across the country for the four-day "health care leadership and administrative decision making in response to weapons of mass destruction and all-hazard incidents program held in June.
The training was presented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Emergency Management Institute at the Noble Training Center in Anniston, Ala. The center is devoted to training hospital and health care professionals from across the country in disaster preparedness and response.
"The NTC program emphasized the Incident Command System (ICS) structure that allows the flexibility needed for all different kinds of disasters," Dr. Edwards said. "This builds on our community disaster training and the important lessons learned from responding to the 9/11 attacks."
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Noble Training Center
The NTC and Noble Army Community Hospital are located on 20 acres of land at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Ala. The NTC campus consists of classrooms, breakout rooms, exercise and simulation areas, dormitories, dining and recreational facilities. It also provides a "realistic hospital environment in which to conduct training exercises that include a medical component," Dr. Edwards said.
The training consisted of two days of instruction and two days of hands-on disaster scenarios. The participants did not know what to expect and each patient or disaster situation that arose came unannounced with real limitations associated with a chlorine gas tanker explosion one day and a smallpox outbreak on the second. Limitations associated with the disasters included staffing, access to supplies and accidents at the hospital site while a disaster is going on — a nurse being injured, a hostage situation and a truck backing into a loading dock and spilling hazardous material.
"It all seems extreme, but the skills we learned could easily be practiced on any given day in the community setting," Quirk said.
"It's as close to the real thing as you can get. From chemical exposures and infectious disease to violent crimes and hostage situations, the training is designed to provide health care professionals with the skills to manage the most devastating of circumstances."
During one of the practice drills that lasted four hours, Quirk triaged 60 patients. "The training creates a unified structure with many different departments and organizations working together," he said. "The goal is to test beyond the Emergency Department's response into the inner workings of the hospital and the different departments that are critical to a successful outcome such as security, administration, social services, infection control and maintenance."
While the first 10 minutes are scripted, Dr. Edwards said the rest is "left to the flow of events."
"It is about making decisions in a split second and having to live with them — setting up procedures, having a good plan in place and knowing your constraints," Dr. Edwards said.
Dr. Edwards and Quirk agree the take-home lessons were the need for flexibility and for a strong incident command center.
"The major goal is communication between all departments, with the incident command center funneling all requests," Dr. Edwards said. "This ensures that no department is functioning in a vacuum, that needs are being met efficiently and that the quality of care being provided continues at the highest possible level. The NTC training gives us a new perspective on scaling up or down as the incident progresses."
Southcoast Hospitals Group, which in addition to Tobey Hospital consists of St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford and Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, conducts emergency preparedness drills several times during the year at each of the hospital sites to test emergency response systems and the roles that each department in the hospital plays during an emergency situation. Since September 11, 2001, Southcoast Hospital Group's Emergency Preparedness Committee has expanded its disaster drills to involve more local agencies and a broader area of coverage with more complex disaster scenarios. The drills also incorporate the mass decontamination unit (MDU), which allows for decontamination of multiple patients arriving at the same time. The self-contained units were provided by the Department of Homeland Security funding and are housed by local fire departments in towns with hospital emergency departments. These trainings are conducted at least once a year at each hospital site.
"The drills in our own communities are extremely important for the hospital and the community's operational readiness and emergency resources," said Patrick Gannon, Vice President of Performance Improvement, Southcoast Hospitals Group. "Limitations for these drills are the flow of patients and the public as expected at any operational facility. Most health care providers on the community level do not have the opportunity to experience the intensive level of disaster training provided at the Noble Training facility. The faculty members at Noble literally wrote the book on emergency management for the federal government."
Gannon plans to attend the NTC training in September with an additional five people from Southcoast's emergency preparedness committee, including representatives from security, infection control, administration and the emergency departments.
About Southcoast
Southcoast Health System, a not-for-profit charitable organization, is a community based health delivery system with multiple access points, offering an integrated continuum of health services throughout Southeastern Massachusetts and East Bay, Rhode Island. It includes Southcoast Hospitals Group, formed in 1996 from the merger of Charlton Memorial Hospital in Fall River, St. Luke's Hospital in New Bedford and Tobey Hospital in Wareham.
Southcoast is one of three community hospitals approved by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to perform open heart surgery and primary angioplasty beginning in Spring 2002.
Media Contact
Joyce Faria Brennan
Phone: 508-961-5270
Pager: 508-387-9605
Fax: 508-961-5876
brennanj@southcoast.org
