Cascade Medical staff experience eye-opening FEMA training

More than 150 actors swarmed the training hospital's entrance when Jerri Smith and Veronica Goyne stepped off the bus. Some of the actors stumbled toward them, covered in fake blood. Actors portraying frustrated family members fumed at staff and fought with each other.

Before they arrived, Smith and Goyne had been briefed on a hypothetical scenario: A chemical plant exploded next to a football stadium where 20,000 people had gathered for an event. On a typical weekday, the two work together in the business office at Cascade Medical in Leavenworth. But on that day, their job was to set up a triage center to decontaminate patients before they entered the hospital.

"It was intense," Smith said. "You have to turn your emotions off and focus on the task at hand. That was the hardest thing for me, to know that it could be your family member or neighbor, but you have put any feelings aside and focus on getting them through decontamination."

The live drill was part of Hospital Emergency Response Training (HERT) for Mass Casualty Incidents, a five-day boot camp hosted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in late March. Cascade sent Smith and Goyne to learn how to:

•Set up a emergency treatment area and decontamination corridor during an emergency

•Use the appropriate level of personal protective equipment

•Survey and decontaminate patients for a chemical, biological or radiological contamination

•Assign priority for patients who need medical attention

•FEMA-certified to train others at Cascade Medical and around Washington State to set up and operate emergency treatment and decontamination areas

"More than anything, I came out of the training with a real understanding of the difference I can make," Smith said.

Two weeks later, Cascade Medical sent six more staff members to a different FEMA training, Healthcare Leadership for All-Hazards Incidents, where they learned how to operate within an incident command center and effectively work with other agencies during an emergency.

Six people attended the four-day training: Chief Operations Officer Amy Webb, Human Resources Director Reyne Boik, House Supervisor Jay Bretz, EMS Director Brian Pulse, Nursing Director Kelly Allen and Facilities Director Greg Horton.

Cascade was the smallest facility represented among the 50 attendees. The class included more than two days of role-playing in a bustling incident command center - a pod of 25 computer stations, where people talked over radios and phones and television broadcasts and hospital pages mumbled in the background. The trainees worked with other emergency agencies, gathered information, responded to media requests and monitored operations, supplies and equipment throughout the hospital.

"It was so realistic, which is part of why it was so successful," Webb said. "The actors are in your face. The power went out. The hospital was on lockdown. Nerves were getting frayed."

The live training began with a briefing about chemical spill, but the incident quickly grew more complicated as trainers added a plane crash, a live shooter, a smallpox outbreak and several power outages. The class dealt with more than 250 injections by the end of the exercise.

"There would never be that many incidents at one time, but they needed that extra adrenaline and chaos to simulate what it might feel like in a real situation," Webb said.

The training helped Cascade's staff realize that in an emergency - the walking wounded aren't the only patients who need attention. In the exercise, the majority of the crowd, and the most unruly, were the family and friends of patients, Webb said.

"It helped us realize that when we have a rush of people, it's not just medical care we need to give but there are psychological and social needs we need to meet as well," Webb said.

For both trainings, all expenses - including travel and accommodations - were covered by FEMA. The live drills were held at the Noble Training Facility, the nation's only hospital dedicated to training healthcare professionals in disaster preparedness and response. Cascade Medical first sent Facilities Director Greg Horton as its emergency preparedness coordinator in July 2014. This year, Cascade sent eight staff members as part of a larger emphasis on preparedness and emergency response.

"This is above and beyond what a lot of hospitals our size can commit to," Horton said. "We feel it's really important. The training really makes you think about the risk factors we have here in Leavenworth - the trains that go through town, the agricultural operations, the mountain passes, the huge volume of tourists. We hope we never have to use this training, but we need to be ready just in case."

For information about the facility or the trainings, visit www.cdp.dhs.gov.  

Cascade Medical is a nonprofit, community-owned, Critical Access Hospital delivering extraordinary healthcare by taking more time with each patient and their families. Built around Primary Care, and using state-of-the-art equipment, the medical center also provides Physical, Occupational and Speech Therapy, Ambulance Service, Aquatic Therapy, Lab and Screening Services, Emergency, Acute/Inpatient, and Inpatient Rehabilitation Care in a tranquil, convenient location.