RUMFORD – Tuesday night’s simulated twin disasters at Rumford Hospital involved 250 to 300 emergency responders, some coming from as far away as Paris.
Mistakes were made, especially with communications, but many more strengths were realized during the two-hour drill, Doug West, hospital facilities manager, said Wednesday afternoon.
“It was a blast! We owned the whole block up there! The drill went exceptionally well. Everything happened that we didn’t want happening,” he said.
Rumford police rerouted traffic on Franklin Street and Lincoln Avenue during the simulation.
The scenario, West said, originated on the third floor with an upset subcontractor who knocked out his boss with a pipe, then two hospital employees who tried to stop the man. Additionally, all of them had fallen into a toxic tile-removing chemical.
The hospital has been undergoing renovations, so the situation played out in a fitting environment.
The combative man fled the hospital and promptly got into an accident with a deaf driver, contaminating the scene for unwitting first responders due to his chemical exposure.
West said high school students portrayed most of the actors and hospital “patients,” who had to be evacuated to the adjacent Swift River Health Care facility, which was transformed into a makeshift emergency room.
One of the first things to go wrong, however, was something the hospital teaches its staff, the SBAR technique, or, Situation-Background-Assessment-Recommendation.
Designed to combat communication breakdown, West said someone using the technique would determine the situation, provide background information on what happened, assess possible problems, and recommend what should be done.
“No one did that last night,” he said.
So, the combative-worker scenario evolved incorrectly into a chemical spill situation, which included evacuating “patients” from stairwells, into which nurses are trained to move patients to help firefighters.
Additionally, West said no one identified the exact location of the third-floor assault, confusing responders.
Outside, at the simulated accident, actors portraying the two injured drivers had to wait about an hour before being found by firefighters, who were initially given incorrect information about the wreck site.
Several fire departments participated in the drill, which also included Med-Care Ambulance, the Oxford County Decontamination Strike Team from Norway-Paris and the NewPage Regional Response Team for Hazardous Materials of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
“We learned that it’s inevitable that first responders are going to get exposed to chemicals if they don’t have all the information,” Med-Care Director Dean Milligan said Wednesday afternoon of the drill.
“The most positive thing about the drill was to look at what we have in this area. I think we’re ahead of the curve,” he added.
West agreed.
“We’re a community that works together. One exceptional strength was using Swift River as a backup ER. Within 45 minutes, you walked in, and, boom, it was an ER center. It came together great,” he said.
“We needed the drill in order to do things when it happens, but, honestly, it’s easier to do in real time when it happens,” Milligan said.
But the mistakes, which West labeled “learning curves,” must be corrected. That’s why about 300 critique sheets were doled out for a future debriefing session.
“We’ve just got to make it better. Our goal at Rumford Hospital is to be the best hospital,” West said.
Comments are no longer available on this story