Triage exercise tests hospital emergency room
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POLSON — The Scenario: A 7.2 earthquake hit the Polson area.
The Polson High School gym collapses.
St. Joseph’s Medical Center is intact.
Luckily this did not really happen, but St. Joseph’s Medical Center held a mass triage exercise on Wednesday to determine how well the hospital and emergency room could handle mass injuries and casualties, according to Marion Cooper, Incident Commander.
Medical triage is the sorting out of casualties of war or other disaster to determine priority of need and proper place of treatment. The mass triage exercise began at 1:30 p.m., but before that about 36 Kicking Horse students, studying to become Certified Medical Assistants, volunteered to play the wounded high school students and gathered at the Grandview Clinic.
Darwin Hensley, a local Emergency Medical Technician and former Hollywood makeup artist, who worked on such movies at “The Patriot,” taught a few students to do maquillage, French for makeup. Then Hensley and his protégées used their magic on the victims. Blood, bruises, black eyes, scrapes, gaping cuts and wounds were the norm as students took their turn “getting injured.”
Oddly, the wounded and injured seemed to be having a great time.
Each student wore a card listing his or her injuries. Red were the most serious injuries, yellow were medium injuries and green were “scuffed up” according to Cooper.
The exercise was held outside the Emergency Room clinic so it wouldn’t impact other patients.
Missy Hensley and Eric Henslin, paramedics, and Brandy Wilson, Emergency Medical Technician, all from Polson Ambulance, observed the exercise since triage is what they do everyday.
The exercise even included actors to play parents who came screaming into the ER searching for their children.
As the wounded and dead patients were sorted out and treated, the hospital’s dietary department brought out red, white and blue popsicles for them.
After the exercise, everyone met back at the Grandview clinic for a debriefing. The students headed back to school, and Cooper and the team leaders and other participants discussed the event.
Henslin said he saw more evaluation than usual.
“With 70 patients, that wouldn’t happen,” he noted.
Suggesting that the most experienced staff be doing triage, Henslin said communication was good and the incident commander was easy to find.
Each patient was issued a hospital bracelet, and Henslin suggested a sheet of stickers should be generated to match the bracelet for labeling tests, blood draws, etc.
John Payne, green team leader, noted that with so many parents arriving to look for their children, additional support, maybe hospital staff, could help.
Supplies were easily accessed according to Cooper, although Jennifer Forbis suggested someone be sent to central supply to deal with the large numbers of body bags, crutches, etc., needed.
Although there were small things to be tweaked, such as extra radio practice and form manipulation, Cooper said the mass triage exercise went well.
