Health Professionals Experience Realistic Disaster Training

The Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital hosted their first Health Professionals Disaster Training Course at the Loma Linda Medical Simulation Center on Sept. 16. The training event was a collaboration between Dr. Adam Czynski and Karen Greeley from the LLUCH NICU Disaster Preparedness Committee, Margot Reeves and Dr. Kent Denmark, Medical Director of the Medical Simulation Center. The event consisted of four scenarios involving realistic disaster simulations. They ranged from a shooter at a medical office, a mother giving birth to her baby at a cafeteria while a shooter was in the hospital, a power outage at a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and a fire at a Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). The training course was an all-day event starting at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 4:30 p.m. In addition to the scenario training, guest speaker FBI Special Agent, Jeffrey Cugno attended the event. Dr. Denmark explained that these scenarios were the most sophisticated level of the three kinds of medical simulations taught at the Medical Simulation Center. Dr. Denmark commented that these scenarios are, “…referred to as immersive, interprofessional scenarios. It is immersive in that it should feel as if you are really there and if you get stuck, you are on your own. The instructors are not going to intervene and help out (apart from stopping actual violence). It is interprofessional in that participants are playing the role of their particular profession. For example the doctor is a doctor and the nurse is a nurse.” This is the first time the Medical Simulation Center has done such simulations with the intensity of physical threat with a gunfire. For the shooter simulation, actual (blank) bullets were used, with help from the Redlands Police Department, which made the shooter scenarios much more realistic. Dr. Czynski mentioned that this training course was a pilot event. It was the first of its kind at Loma Linda and Dr. Czynski stated, “We plan to do this at least two times a year, but we would love to be able to take the concept of what we have done and bring it to other hospitals.” Dr. Czynski and Karen Greeley’s goal was to make a training course that involved realistic simulations with actual firearm in order to better train doctors, nurses, and other health professionals. In order to do this they partnered with local community organizations such as the Redlands Police Department and Colton Fire Department Paramedics.