NAEMT Tackles Disaster Preparedness in EMS
When the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians launched its EMS Preparedness Committee in 2015, one of the group’s charges was to evaluate our readiness to respond to major events. It conducted a survey that found that lacking: A full 64% of respondents said they’d never worked in a disaster, nor had many been sufficiently trained.
That led to the creation of the new All Hazards Disaster Response (AHDR) eight-hour course, aimed at giving prehospital providers the knowledge and skills to manage patients following any type of disaster or mass-casualty event.
It consists of interactive modules that teach needed skills in a team-based approach, applied through tabletop exercises and drills and culminating in a large mass-casualty scenario. Participants begin with a hazard-vulnerability assessment and preparedness self-assessment, from which content can be tailored to their systems and threats. “Disasters,” noted Faizan Arshad, MD, EMS medical director for Healthquest Systems in Hudson Valley, NY, in an EMS Nation podcast, “occur on a near-daily basis regardless of your specific location within the country.”
AHDR takes a wide-ranging approach for boots-on-the-ground crews who are first on the scene and equips them to begin an initial response both medically and operationally. This includes reinforcement of trauma and triage skills and refamiliarization with structures like the Incident Command System and public health relationships. “We really tried to focus on principles and concepts,” said EMS Preparedness Committee Vice Chair Sean Britton, “and not write ourselves into a box where some of our rural providers and communities might think it was too urban-driven, and some of our urban communities might think, This isn’t really what we consider a disaster.”
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