Drill simulates disaster for nursing students
CHESTER >> An explosion, then smoke, screams and sirens. This was the scene at Widener University Schwartz Athletic Center Thursday as a simulated yet intense emergency disaster drill was held for 140 senior nursing students to test their classroom learning and skill sets.
The School of Nursing collaborated with local and state emergency response agencies and medical centers across eight states and three counties, including the Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Public Health Preparedness, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Surge Medical Assistance Response Team, Crozer-Chester Medical Center, the Chester Police Department and the Chester Fire Department.
After the initial explosion, 100 students playing the roles of victims, complete with dramatic theater-quality makeup, stumbled across the gymnasium floor in various states of injury and panic.
Nursing students functioning as triage nurses began the daunting task of proper triage protocol for the large-scale disaster.
“We follow the ABC’s for triaging victims,” said student Frankie Jordan of Garnet Valley, who is interning at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and plans on being an Emergency Room nurse. “Airway, breathing and circulation.”
Jordan said that she and her fellow classmates have been looking forward to and preparing for with table top disaster scenarios.
Widener’s Dawn Ferry, director for the center on simulation, said the event is important even for students not planning to work in emergency medicine.
“It’s a different setting, but with the way the world is today and all the disasters happening, if they happen to are near one or at one they are kind of learning what to do,” Ferry said. “Even as a victim they are still seeing what is going on.”
As the nurses moved among the victims, they placed tags signifying the level of injury. The “victims” shouted and screamed in horror and two students ran and hid screaming to stay away.
In addition to the explosion the drill imagined exposure to chlorine from the pool’s chemical supply. Students exposed or burned by the chemical were placed in white suits for decontamination.
Some students at times nervously giggled while acting out their roles. Ferry said at debriefing they start thinking about it and they realize how serious it is.
In the parking lot of the athletic center the injured were divided into three areas. Red, the most seriously injured, they are the priority patients. Yellow level, they have an injury, not life threatening, but something that has to be addressed soon and green, someone who had an exposure, and needs to be checked. A fourth area was a spot, one medic told the victims they don’t want to be placed, the black tarp, deceased victims.
After being evaluated the victims were placed in ambulances or on buses and transported to four area hospitals where they would progress through the emergency room and hospital mass-casualty training.
“It helps the county and it helps the hospitals to see if their systems are working,” said Ferry.
“We like the idea of doing the mass casualty drill, especially the burn exercise,” said Timothy Boyce, director of Delaware County’s Department of Emergency Services and as the county’s emergency management coordinator. “Burns take up a lot of resources and require a lot of coordination back at the communications center. This is a real good opportunity because volume matters. You know with any emergency response you can table top four, five eight or ten victims, but when it comes to moving 50 or 60 badly injured people there is no substitute for actually trying.”