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Development of an “All-Hazards” Hospital Disaster Preparedness Training Course Utilizing Multi-Modality Teaching

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Brett Collander ,
Brad Green ,
Yuri Millo ,
Christine Shamloo ,
Joyce Donnellan  and
Craig DeAtley
Brett Collander*
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Brad Green
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Yuri Millo
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Christine Shamloo
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Joyce Donnellan
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
Craig DeAtley
Affiliation:
ER One Institute, Division of Emergency Medicine, Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC, USA
*
ER One Institute 110 Irving Street NW Room EB-7108 Washington, DC 20010-2975 USA E-mail: bac42@georgetown.edu
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Abstract

Objectives:

The objectives of the study were to develop and evaluate an “all-hazards” hospital disaster preparedness training course that utilizes a combi-nation of classroom lectures, skills sessions, tabletop sessions, and disaster exercises to teach the principles of hospital disaster preparedness to hospital-based employees.

Methods:

Participants attended a two-day, 16-hour course, entitled Hospital Disaster Life Support (HDLS). The course was designed to address seven core competencies of disaster training for healthcare workers. Specific disaster situations addressed during HDLS included: (1) biological; (2) conventional; (3) radiological; and (4) chemical mass-casualty incidents. The primary goal of HDLS was not only to teach patient care for a disaster, but more important-ly, to teach hospital personnel how to manage the disaster itself. Knowledge gained from the HDLS course was assessed by pre- and post-test evaluations. Additionally, participants completed a course evaluation survey at the conclu-sion of HDLS to assess their attitudes about the course.

Results:

Participants included 11 physicians, 40 nurses, 23 administrators/direc-tors, and 10 other personnel (n = 84). The average score on the pre-test was 69.1 ±12.8 for all positions, and the post-test score was 89.5 ±6.7, an improve-ment of 20.4 points (p <0.0001, 17.2–23.5).Participants felt HDLS was edu-cational (4.2/5), relevant (4.3/5) and organized (4.3/5).

Conclusions:

Identifying an effective means of teaching hospital disaster pre-paredness to hospital-based employees is an important task. However, the opti-mal strategy for implementing such education still is under debate.The HDLS course was designed to utilize multiple teaching modalities to train hospital-based employees on the principles of disaster preparedness. Participants of HDLS showed an increase in knowledge gained and reported high satisfaction from their experiences at HDLS. These results suggest that HDLS is an effec-tive way to train hospital-based employees in the area of disaster preparedness.

Keywords

disaster preparednessemergency medicinesimulationtraining
Type
Research Article
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 63 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2008

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