Medical emergency readiness when disaster strikes can be the difference between life and death.
That’s why Raleigh County Emergency Services regularly holds mock disasters, like the one on December 11 at Raleigh General Hospital that simulated a plane crash.
These drills are used to identify gaps in large-scale mass casualty/injury preparedness.
“This is critical for us to be able to work with other area agencies, whether it’s the Raleigh County 911 center, local EMS, our local law enforcement, or fire departments,” said CEO David Brash. “It’s essential that we are able to prepare and communicate with those folks.”
For health care providers to do something like a mock disaster takes many meetings and trauma exercise preparation.
“We’ll do a tabletop first, which is kind of like a brief. We sit around the table and talk about how it would go,” RCES Emergency Planner Tabitha Horn said. “The second one would be the full scale, which you see now; you send patients in with IDs that say what’s wrong with them. Medical has to treat the patient as if it were actually happening.”
First responders train in coordination/protocols for handling patient surges and triage systems to refine response skills before a real emergency.
“I think 15 patients came in with various degrees of injury. Some of those would be something we could accommodate and treat here,” said Brash. “We may have to engage some outside agencies for a higher level of care, such as burn services.”
Whether it’s a mock or real emergency, it’s all hands on deck immediately.
“We are contacted as emergency management to make sure everybody’s contacted, everybody is on scene,” Horn said. “Everybody is getting what they need, and all the information is being dispersed to the right people.”
This is what they do every day: take care of people (often) in their darkest hour.
“We always want to improve and go the extra mile and be prepared,” said Brash.
Added Horn: “We just try to be better prepared for next time.”
