The drill was specifically designed to have the college’s nursing students diagnose wounded victims needing immediate aid after receiving patients from the EMT students. Nursing students also established a triage system, learned how to manage a mass casualty situation by tagging victims using standardized color-coded tags to identify victims that required immediate (red tag), delayed (yellow tag), minor (green tag), as well as deceased (black tag) medical services. Once the victims were tagged they were treated as patients in an emergency room setting.
Fire Academy cadets acted as a responding engine. After assessing the victims in the vehicle that crashed as a result of the driver being shot, they deployed the jaws-of-life to extract the victims from the vehicle. Victims were then provided first aid before being transported or directed to the triage center.
EMT students helped the nursing students prepare the patients for transport to the Roadrunner Hospital, which was located on a different part of the campus. They also monitored the patients until they were in the emergency room. The EMT students found themselves drawn into the emergency room scenario as the hospital staff was responding to a mass casualty event that caused many participants to have tunnel vision.
The police officers gained valuable experience training in a location that many were not familiar with. The response included making areas safe for other participants, rescuing victims and negotiating for the release of a hostage. The fact that the officers did not know all the players in the exercise or the complete schedule of events added value. The scenarios were also modified so that those who participated in both exercises would experience a different emergency event.
After the emergency drills were concluded, each area conducted a final exit briefing. Comments and input was encouraged from all categories of participants. The students said they learned a lot from the stress of being in the drill scenarios. The exit briefing provided the students an opportunity to critically examine their key decisions and reflect on their communication and delegation skills. An advantage of coordinating multiple scenarios was the bleeding over of skill sets as the various participants were forced to work together in teams to solve the issues they faced.
The collaboration between the college departments, the Huntington Park Police Department and the CARE and Cole-Schaefer ambulance companies shows how partnerships between public and private organizations can benefit real world emergency response and planning. The annual emergency drill is becoming a notable capstone exercise to test the knowledge, skills and abilities gained through the college’s training and education programs.
This article was written by Rio Hondo College’s Ygnacio Flores, Ed.D., Don Mason, MS and Tracy Rick
man, MPA.
