High-fidelity multiactor emergency preparedness training for patient care providers

Abstract

Background: Providing comprehensive emergency preparedness training (EPT) for patient care providers is important to the future success of emergency preparedness operations in the United States. Disasters are rare, complex events involving many patients and environmental factors that are difficult to reproduce in a training environment. Few EPT programs possess both competency-driven goals and metrics to measure life-saving performance during a multiactor simulated disaster.Methods: The development of an EPT curriculum for patient care providers—provided first to medical students, then to a group of experienced disaster medical providers—that recreates a simulated clinical disaster using a combination of up to 15 live actors and six high-fidelity human simulators is described. Specifically, the authors detail the Center for Health Professional Training and Emergency Response’s (CHPTER’s) 1-day clinical EPT course including its organization, core competency development, medical student self-evaluation, and course assessment.Results: Two 1-day courses hosted by CHPTER were conducted in a university simulation center. Students who completed the course improved their overall knowledge and comfort level with EPT skills.Conclusions: The authors believe this is the first published description of a curriculum method that combines high-fidelity, multiactor scenarios to measure the life-saving performance of patient care providers utilizing a clinical disaster scenario with 10 patients at once. A larger scale study, or preferably a multicenter trial, is needed to further study the impact of this curriculum and its potential to protect provider and patient lives.

Preparing for the Surge: A Half-Day Emergency Preparedness Training Course for the “Second Front”

“…These publications include preliminary cognitive and self-assessment data as well as limited small group and mass-casualty-incident (MCI) skill assessment data. [16][17][18]…”

Securing the Second Front: Achieving First Receiver Safety and Security through Competency-based Tools

“…[6][7][8][9] Following brief didactic and small group sessions, interprofessional teams of four to six trainees were observed in a large university-based simulator designed to recreate environmentally challenging, multi-patient scenarios using high-fidelity human simulators and professional patient actors. A curriculum task force established nine learning objectives, 18 competencies, and 34 performance objectives.…”

Are Pediatric Emergency Physicians More Knowledgeable and Confident to Respond to a Pediatric Disaster after an Experiential Learning Experience?

“…Simulation as a modality has been a core means for training and evaluating performance of health care workers involved in a disaster response. [4][5][6][7] Some evidence has demonstrated that simulation offers a superior and longer-lasting learning experience than traditional didactic methods alone when training medical staff to manage and treat pediatric disaster victims. 8 The experiential learning activity focusing on disaster management must construct a realistic incident in which providers care for multiple injured patients while simultaneously coping with numerous stressors designed to tax an institution's resources.…”