• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

Prep your staff members with a chemical drill

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, March 15, 2007

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

A recent chemical drill at a Texas hospital indicated that hospital staff members don't act quickly enough to isolate exposed victims before identifying the chemical, and security staff are confused at times about what to do. To develop drills that are useful and appropriate for your facility, consider the following recommendations:

• Customize exercises to your backyard. Make your drills more realistic by thinking about what actually is more likely to happen in your region.
• Make the scenario mysterious. To create a true medical puzzle, don't have your actors explain what happened in much detail.
• Strive for realism. Don't reveal that the drill is not a real-life event until deep into the simulation.
• Practice decontamination procedures. Test how staff determine whether victims need decontamination.
• Figure out where patients will go. If an exposure forces you to close the ER, plan contingencies for incoming patients (e.g., those brought in by ambulance or walk-ins).

  To get more information, go to Briefings on Hospital Safety (BOHS). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire March issue of BOHS. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BOHS have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their March issue.

Want to receive articles like this one in your inbox? Subscribe to Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education!

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive