Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital emergency management leaders earn FEMA certifications

Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital (SHRH) is better able to prepare and respond to disasters with the successful completion of a Federal Emergency Management Agency certification course conducted at the Center for Domestic Preparedness headquartered in Anniston, Ala.

Devin Snead, manager of security and emergency management for SHRH, and James Short, a security officer for SHRH, graduated from the four-day program on May 10 with certificates in FEMA’s Healthcare Leadership for Mass Casualty Incidents as well as the Integrated Capstone Event which addressed disaster preparedness at the facility and system level.

Healthcare leaders must be prepared for any incident that results in multiple casualties, whether it is the result of a natural disaster; an accidental or intentional release of a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or explosives (CBRNE) hazard; or a disease outbreak that results in an epidemic or pandemic.

The course focused on preparing healthcare leaders to make critical decisions in all-hazards disaster emergency preparedness activities. Participants learned essential disaster-planning response and recovery functions through lecture and discussion format which are then applied in a tabletop exercise and a two-day functional exercise.  

“This training course aligns with the training we have been participating in with our community partners,” said Snead.  “FEMA put together a real-world exercise where we were put into a hospital command center in the middle of multiple disasters. In emergency management we prepare for and train our team members to be prepared for worst-case scenarios.”

Here are some of the critical skill sets learned during this training program:

• Clarify healthcare emergency management roles and responsibilities in the disaster life-cycle process — mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery — for all-hazards disasters.
• Identify key partners in disaster preparedness, their roles, and interrelationships in responding to a disaster.
• Relate the use of the Incident Command System in the healthcare system through Hospital Incident Command System and the Public Health Incident System.
• Illustrate roles and responsibilities in obtaining and distributing medical supplies in a disaster situation.
• Illustrate the difficult decisions that healthcare leaders face regarding palliative care and mass-fatality management.
• Summarize the development of emergency public information and risk communications messages.
• Differentiate requirements for types of decontamination procedures and facilities, in addition to personal protective equipment to be used in healthcare facilities for a variety of hazards.
• Describe the various concepts associated with the disaster-planning process.
• Identify important aspects of Noble, U.S.A., and roles of the functional areas in the exercises.
• Apply Comprehensive Emergency Management to a disaster-response situation.
• Apply the concepts of healthcare disaster planning.
• Summarize the role of healthcare response in an all-hazards disaster.
• Conduct healthcare response to a disaster.
• Respond to a healthcare all-hazards disaster.

Sentara Halifax Regional Hospital strives to keep its patients, visitors, and employees safe. It is specialized training like this that ensures that our facility is trained, and our team members are equipped to respond to the needs of our community.