6 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 8
W
e added a
spark to
our emer-
gency operations plan
this year by letting
staff play the roles of
patient evacuees dur-
ing our quarterly fire
evacuation drills,
which involve more
than 150 members of
our perioperative
team. We had been
using mannequins in
our drills, but every-
one was more
engaged when we
swapped them out for staff. That's important when you're trying to
teach so many their role in evacuating an anesthetized patient during
a fire, especially when you have as many ORs as we do: 26 in our
Level 1 adult trauma center, 7 in our pediatric trauma center and 3
smaller ORs in our south wing.
Staff actively participate in our fire evacuation drills. They rotate
through stations where they pull the fire alarm, spray fire extinguish-
ers at a simulated fire, shut off the gas control valves, and pack
"patients" into a Med Sled evacuation stretcher and move them to dif-
EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
Fire Evacuation Drills (Not) for Dummies
Ideas Work
P r a c t i c a l p e a r l s f r o m y o u r c o l l e a g u e s
That
• PLAYING PATIENT Using staff members as evacuees instead of mannequins in
fire evacuation drills can enhance learning.
Milton
S.
Hershey
Medical
Center
