North Shore-LIJ Trains Hospital Staff in Mass Casualties Response

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, the North Shore-LIJ Health System recently hosted an emergency drill last week in Lake Success across from the LIJ Medical Center that focused on disaster response in the wake of such an attack locally.

Though the drills were planned before the Boston Marathon bombing, as North Shore-LIJ employees have been working with FEMA to become certified to teach these drills to be prepared for such a mass casualty disaster, the training took on new urgency in the wake of the attacks in Boston.

“We are a terrorist target in New York,” Anthony Egan, the security and emergency training manager at North Shore-LIJ’s Center for Emergency Medical Services, said in a release. “We have to prepare for man-made events as well as natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy.”

About 20 clinicians and students participated in simulated exercises aimed at educating them on how to receive patients injured in a mass-casualty situation.

During the drill, staff divided into groups to tend to “victims” who had survived an IED (Improvised Explosive Devise); others dealt with the aftermath of chemical warfare, such as choking, blisters or nerve agents.

Garbed in yellow hazmat suits, staff practiced triaging their victims, leading them into decontamination areas and carefully showering and cleaning them to remove contaminants. The course depicted real-life aftermath, where some victims “walked to the hospital” themselves while others arrived by ambulance. All the while, staff learned the physical and psychological demands of wearing personal protective equipment during the training.

“This program is a result of the employees of North Shore-LIJ wanting to be certified to teach the course themselves,” said Clayton Calkins, training specialist for the Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, Alabama. “This drill was the culmination of two years of planning, and hopefully it leads to more healthcare systems doing the same.”

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