News

Disaster drill tests hospital's ability to respond to influx of patients

Boscobel Area Health Care tested its new emergency room with a full-scale disaster drill on Wednesday, November 12, 2008.

The purpose of the drill was to test the facility's emergency preparedness plan and the new fixed decontamination area in the emergency department.

"We have been very fortunate not to have had a large scale disaster in our community, but it is comforting to know we could respond if anything happened," said Sally Rosemeyer, Quality Services Director.

The scenario was the derailment of a train containing toxic chemicals. The resulting chemical cloud exposed a bus of school children heading home from a field trip. Poor visibility from the cloud resulted in a vehicle colliding with the school bus.

"In this scenario, we had to utilize our decontamination unit, and deal with a wide range of injuries from the collision and chemical exposure," said Rosemeyer.

The scenario brought in the rescue squad, police, school, hospital, clinics, and nursing home. Volunteers played the role of patients and family members. All areas of the hospital were tested, from the medical staff responding to the influx of patients, to social workers handling the flood of parents looking for their children, to the security systems in place to isolate chemically exposed victims from the rest of the patient population.

"Even with the increased space our new emergency room affords, there could be cases where we have more patients than space. We have plans in place and drills to test them so we know we could handle the influx, and be able to triage and treat patients in a timely and effective manner," said John Russell, Administrator, who served as the facility's Incident Commander.

Boscobel Area Health Care updates the facility's telephone tree and disaster plan regularly, and tests it with different scenarios to keep staff familiar with the policies and procedures. Boscobel Area Health Care uses a standardized Incident Command System.