On my last visit to the Red Cross field hospital training camp I was in awe of the amount of work and training that is involved. The team of highly skilled doctors, nurses, anesthetists, midwives, psycho-social support workers, technicians, logistics experts and administrators train to set up an entire field hospital in conditions that simulate what it will be like when they are eventually deployed.
Part of the training exercise is a mass casualty simulation where Emergency Response Unit (ERU) staff must respond to a mass casualty in addition to the disaster to which they have been initially deployed. On my last visit I decided to stay back and observe the simulation but on my trip to the field hospital training last week I decided to participate in the simulation by getting dressed up like a victim of the mass casualty designed to show the delegates what a mass casualty could look like in the field and test their ability to respond on a moment's notice.
The response from the ERU delegates during the mass casualty simulation was pretty amazing. Within minutes they were coordinating different levels of injuries and delegating specific parts of the hospital for each task. The team worked together to triage and treat all of the "victims" and handled all of the plot twists we threw at them with ease. While there were definitely some challenges in communicating and organizing everyone inside the hospital, the team was able to identify these problems and talk about solutions in a debriefing exercise following the simulation.
The Canadian Red Cross Emergency Response Units (or field hospitals) can be deployed in the event of a disaster anywhere in the world where the existing health system or infrastructure has been damaged or overwhelmed.