Disasters and disaster exercises occur in the face of routine patient care in most facilities. Health Care Providers have very little time to prepare for the types of casualties to whom they may be responding or (in the case of hospitals) who they may be receiving. A quick 5-10 minute training tool (JUST IN TIME TRAINING MANUALS) can mean all the difference in the understanding of injury patterns or illnesses associated with certain disasters. A brief understandable description of Pathophysiology of the disaster injury or illness can preserve life and prevent disability. It can help to anticipate personnel needs, provide triage clues to injury orillness and project supply needs. It can also provide usefulinformation that may help maintain a healthy viable workforce.
One of the greatest complaints of exercise planners and clinical responders is that the exercise is a “waste of time,” or, “we just can’t get the nurses and doctors involved.” Health care providers need to be challenged and like to be educated. Learn how to engage your response personnel by providing a challenging set of victims that look and act like real patients arriving from the disaster zone. Health care providers are required to certify and recertify with challenging clinical scenarios and tests. You can now provide these victim scenarios (
DPS VICTIM CARD SETS), tests (
JUST IN TIME TRAINING MANUALS), and assessments (
TRIAGE ASSESSMENT TOOLS) with DPS tools. Knowing that you are going to be tested engages most health care providers because it is a measureable outcome of their performance.
Use evaluation and assessment tools to objectively assess performance and measure performance improvement. By using the
DPS VICTIM CARD SETS and the
TRIAGE ASSESSMENT TOOLS, you can determineobjectively your degree of ‘over’ and ‘under’ triage. Learn to create measureable reproducible objectives and evaluate these objectives with statistical feedback so that you can see exercise improvement and implement plans to tackle areas of weakness. Take the subjective assessment out of exercises and replace it with verified evaluation tools.
Exercise like you mean it. Use of the
DPS VICTIM CARD SETS to stimulate exercise play in the most ‘realistic’ fashion possible. Exercise and test your triage staff, your health care providers, your central supply, your patient tracking, your patient reassessment and even your care of realistic victims. Use the clinical data provided on each patient to see if you were correct with your assessment and plan of care.