Disaster Preparedness Response Online (DRPO) - Emergency Response Plan Educational Evaluation & Exercise, Patient Tracking Scenarios

Disaster Preparedness Response Online (DRPO)

Vision:

DPRO envisions a national healthcare community that is prepared for disasters of all types through effective training, education, and continuous quality improvement.

Mission Statement:

The mission of DPRO is to improve the quality of care delivered during times of significant surge and disaster care. Our target audience includes any facility, organization or system involved in the delivery of patient care. We propose that well developed, field tested ‘tools’ can be acquired online and can provide the training and education necessary to improve systems that provide patient care.

DPRO defines ‘tools’ as appropriate education, training materials and products that most accurately reflect conditions experienced during a disaster and therefore challenge first responders and first receivers to behave in a fashion similar to what they may experience during a disaster or mass-casualty situation. We believe that providers who work in the field of emergency patient care have the experience and genuine dedication to healthcare improvement processes. The utilization of materials provided by DPRO will promote the delivery of patient care and improve the health care system’s ability to respond in times of patient surge and disaster care.

Why We Started:

DPRO believes that providers working in the field of emergent patient care have a genuine dedication to education, training, and quality improvement as well as the desire to provide the highest level of care. Historically, disaster exercises have failed to offer simulated victims or appropriate exercise scenarios that engage or challenge healthcare providers in a way that is similar to that which they truly expect to see during a major event. This inability to engage healthcare providers in disaster exercises has fostered a perspective that exercises are a nuisance rather than an opportunity for learning and improvement. At DPRO, we believe that by providing accurate clinical scenarios coupled with appropriate utilization of casualties, health care providers will be challenged and engaged in the exercise process which will ultimately result in improved delivery of care during times of surge, disaster, and potentially catastrophic events.

Additionally, very few hospital disaster preparedness tools are available that promote an environment of self assessment and continuous quality improvement. Our design team has developed and refined through exercise use, several tools to assist with exercise flow, patient tracking, emergency response planning, and casualty care. These tools can be adapted to most response agencies desiring to improve their response capabilities.

Who We Are:

Linda A. Smith, MD, FACEP: Founder

Dr. Linda Smith has extensive work experience in Emergency Medicine including over twenty years of combined academic study, research and direct patient care. She has diverse perspective from her experience as an EMT/Paramedic, nurse and board certified Emergency Medicine physician. She currently practices Emergency Medicine at the Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC) in Anchorage, Alaska. Additionally, Dr. Smith is contractually promoting preparedness efforts through consultant work with the State of Alaska Division of Public Health and the Veteran's Administration.

Dr. Smith has been instrumental in the implementation of the Health Services and Resource Administration (HRSA) grant funding in Alaska having served from 2002-2006 as the Medical Director for the Alaska State Hospital Preparedness Program. Her duties included overseeing the instruction, training and critique of local and national hospital systems in CBRNE events, exercises and related education. In addition to her clinical duties, she assumed a three-year administrative assignment, and was ultimately elected President of the Medical Staff at ANMC. She works closely with state DPH, United States Coast Guard, Disaster Medical Assistance Teams, Division of Homeland Security, and various state and local emergency managers to integrate hospital response protocols for events such as mass casualty incidents and pandemic flu planning activities.

Additionally, she serves on local and state committees working to incorporate hospital perspectives into disaster response. Her extensive involvement was crucial in the assessment and evaluation of healthcare facilities and coordination of medical assets during the Statewide Alaska Shield Northern Edge Exercise in August 2005 and May 2007. Currently, she is working on projects for Alaska State Public Health and the Veteran's Administration facility strategic planning and implementation of limited health resources allocation during mass casualty events including catastrophic care.

James A. Frenchik, MD, FACEP: Founder

Dr. Frenchik is an attending physician in the Emergency Department at the Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC) in Anchorage, Alaska. At ANMC, Dr. Frenchik is an instructor for the hospital’s nationally recognized Clinical Quality Improvement Course. He has created a comprehensive triage training manual for the nursing staff resulting in improved triage, decreased waiting room times, and decreased Urgent Care lengths of stay. As an Army Reserve physician, Dr. Frenchik trains a large number of Army Reserve medics, using exercises and lectures on topics such as pre-hospital and battlefield triage, blast injuries, ballistics, and basic trauma management. Dr. Frenchik learned pre-hospital medical techniques as an active duty Corpsman in the United States Navy and as an air-rescue medic in San Bernardino, California.

For the 2005 Statewide Alaska Shield Northern Edge state-wide exercise, Dr. Frenchik designed a simple, easy-to-learn integrated patient triage, registration, and tracking system for ANMC in cooperation with the ER and ICU nursing staff. He also assisted in the development of the dynamic patient scenarios that were used in the exercise and spawned the idea of providing those scenarios nationally due to the overwhelming positive feedback provided by exercise participants and planners. He was instrumental in implementing the new patient tracking system that has been taught locally and nationally at the 2006 NDMS symposium. Dr. Frenchik continues to develop these novel and challenging dynamic patient scenarios as well as other assessment tools used in disaster preparedness exercises around the country.

Robert Berger: Consultant

Robert Berger has worked in the Healthcare field for over twenty-five years, with a total of 42 years of Federal (military-Army, Air Force, Navy, Air Guard, Public Health Service, and Civil Service) experience in the environmental health field working in the areas of Environmental Health, Industrial Hygiene, Health Physics, Safety, Security, and Risk Management. He has extensive knowledge and experience in consulting, planning, writing and critiquing emergency-management plans and exercises and has applied this skill set to the development of Emergency Response Plans for health care facilities over the past 25 Years.

For the past twenty years, Robert has been working with The Joint Commission, Environment of Care Standards, previously known as Plant, Technology, and Safety Management. Robert's education includes undergraduate degrees in Science & Math (A.S.), Zoology/Wildlife Biology (B.S.), and graduate degrees in Natural Science/Bio-environmental Engineering (M.S.) and Epidemiology/Environmental Health (M.P.H.). He attended the Institutional Environmental Health Residency at the Phoenix Indian Health Services Hospital, and the U.S. Army's Preventative Medicine course at Ft. Sam Houston, TX. Robert currently works for the U.S. Public Health Service as a Senior Environmental Health Officer, assigned to the Southcentral Foundation, Anchorage, Alaska.