Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T21:51:06.963Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Development of an “All-Hazards” Hospital Disaster Preparedness Training Course Utilizing Multi-Modality Teaching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Brett Collander ,
Brad Green ,
Yuri Millo ,
Christine Shamloo ,
Joyce Donnellan  and
Craig DeAtley
Brett Collander*
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Brad Green
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Yuri Millo
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Christine Shamloo
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Joyce Donnellan
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Craig DeAtley
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
*
ER One Institute 110 Irving Street NW Room EB-7108 Washington, DC 20010-2975 USA E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Objectives:

The objectives of the study were to develop and evaluate an “all-hazards” hospital disaster preparedness training course that utilizes a combi-nation of classroom lectures, skills sessions, tabletop sessions, and disaster exercises to teach the principles of hospital disaster preparedness to hospital-based employees.

Methods:

Participants attended a two-day, 16-hour course, entitled Hospital Disaster Life Support (HDLS). The course was designed to address seven core competencies of disaster training for healthcare workers. Specific disaster situations addressed during HDLS included: (1) biological; (2) conventional; (3) radiological; and (4) chemical mass-casualty incidents. The primary goal of HDLS was not only to teach patient care for a disaster, but more important-ly, to teach hospital personnel how to manage the disaster itself. Knowledge gained from the HDLS course was assessed by pre- and post-test evaluations. Additionally, participants completed a course evaluation survey at the conclu-sion of HDLS to assess their attitudes about the course.

Results:

Participants included 11 physicians, 40 nurses, 23 administrators/direc-tors, and 10 other personnel (n = 84). The average score on the pre-test was 69.1 ±12.8 for all positions, and the post-test score was 89.5 ±6.7, an improve-ment of 20.4 points (p <0.0001, 17.2–23.5).Participants felt HDLS was edu-cational (4.2/5), relevant (4.3/5) and organized (4.3/5).

Conclusions:

Identifying an effective means of teaching hospital disaster pre-paredness to hospital-based employees is an important task. However, the opti-mal strategy for implementing such education still is under debate.The HDLS course was designed to utilize multiple teaching modalities to train hospital-based employees on the principles of disaster preparedness. Participants of HDLS showed an increase in knowledge gained and reported high satisfaction from their experiences at HDLS. These results suggest that HDLS is an effec-tive way to train hospital-based employees in the area of disaster preparedness.

Keywords

disaster preparednessemergency medicinesimulationtraining
Type
Research Article
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 63 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Berman, M, Lazar, EJ: Hospital emergency preparedness—Lessons learned since Northbridge. N Eng J Med 2003;348:1307–1308.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2. Greenberg, MI, Jurgens, SM, Gracely, EJ: Emergency department prepared-ness for the evaluation and treatment of victims of biological or chemical ter-rorist attack. J Emerg Med 2002;22:273–278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
3. Hsu, EB, Jenckes, MW, Catlett, CL, Robinson, KA, Feuerstein, C, Cosgrove, SE, Green, GB, Bass, EB: Effectiveness of hospital staff mass-casualty inci-dent training methods: A systematic literature review. Prehospital Disast Med 2004;19(3):191–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4. Kondro, W: Much ballyhooed biohazard training yet to begin. CMAJ 2003;168:1172.Google ScholarPubMed
5. Pesik, N, Keim, M, Sampson, TR: Do US emergency medicine residency pro- grams provide adequate training for bioterrorism? Ann Emerg Med 1999;34:173–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6. Rose, MA, Larrimore, KL: Knowledge and awareness concerning chemical and biological terrorism: Continuing education implications. J Contin Educ Nurs 2002;33(6):253–258.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
7. Cowan, ML, Cloutier, MG: Medical simulation for disaster casualty manage- ment training. J Trauma 1988;28(1 suppl):s178–s182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. Inglesby, TB, Grossman, R, O'Toole, T: A plague on your city: Observations from TOPOFF. Clin Infect Dis 2001;32:436–445.Google ScholarPubMed
9. Kaji, AH, Waeckerle, JF: Disaster medicine and the emergency medicine res- ident. Ann Emerg Med 2003;41:865–870.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. Roccaforte, JD: The World Trade Center attack observations from New York's Bellevue Hospital. Crit Care 2001;5:307–309.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
11. Alexander, AJ, Bandiera, GW, Mazurik, L: A multiphase disaster training exercise for emergency medicine residents: Opportunity knocks. Acad Emerg Med 2005;12(5):404–409.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
12. Rottman, SJ, Shoaf, KI, Dorian, A. Development of a training curriculum for public health preparedness. J Public Health Management Practice 2005; November(Suppl):s128–s131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
13. Tur-Kaspa, I, Lev, EI, Hendler, I, Siebner, R, Shapira, Y, Shemer, J: Preparing hospi-tals for toxicological mass casualties events. Crit Care Med 1999;27(5):1004–1008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14. Chi, CH, Chao, WH, Chuang, CC, Tsai, MC, Tsai, LM: Emergency medical technicians' disaster training by tabletop exercise. Amer J Emerg Med 2001;19(5):433–436.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
15. Idrose, AM, Adnan, WAW, Villa, GF, Abdullah, AHA: The use of classroom training and simulation in the training of medical responders for airport dis-aster. Emerg Med J 2007;24:7–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16. Hsu, EB, Thomas, TL, Bass, EB, Whyne, D, Kelen, GD, Green, GB: Healthcare worker competencies for disaster training. BMC Med Ed 2006;6:9.Google ScholarPubMed
17. Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization: Comprehensive Accreditation Manual for Hospitals:The Official Handbook. Oakbrook Terrace, IL: Joint Commission Resources; 2003.Google Scholar
18. Institute of Medicine: Hospital-Based Emergency Care: At the Breaking Point. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2006, p 6.Google Scholar
19. The Noble Training Center. Available at http://training.fema.gov. Accessed 22 Aug 2007.Google Scholar