San Diego-based Scripps Health prepares to maximize survival in emergency situations by providing realistic "active shooter" simulations for hospital staff and local law enforcement authorities. Scripps held its second active shooter hospital drill Jan. 30 at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla. Here are 5 things to know about the drill, its participants and results.
1. The drill took extensive planning, time for preparation and the involvement of multiple agencies. Alongside fire and police forces, Patty Skoglund, RN, Scripps Health's disaster preparedness coordinator, designed and planned the drill last Friday several months in advance, coordinating internally with Chris Van Gorder, president and CEO of the system, as well as with other external agencies, including police, fire rescue, emergency medical services, SWAT , bomb arson, hostage negotiations involvement.
2. The drill provided participants response training on the top five violent events within the hospital environment. These include a violent patient, active shooter, hostage situation, bomb threat and hospital evacuation.
3. The drill touched on a range of valuable safety lessons for stakeholders. Among other lessons, the drill allowed 135 Scripps participants — including volunteering managers, security personal, several staff registered nurses, operations supervisor RNs and others— along with 170 external participants to:
- Test effectiveness of existing policy and processes for violent events
- Establish command and control of hospital operations, staff and patients during escalation of events
- Practice a full evacuation of the lobby and other affected floors
- Observe rescue task force extraction tactics and the establishment of EMS triage and transport treatment area setup at the hospital entrance for gunshot wound victims
- Test effective communications and support of police actions
4. Immediately following the conclusion of the drill, all participants were debriefed. According to Ms. Skoglund, all feedback was very positive. "The participants were very excited and expressed gratitude for having the ability to participate in a very realistic exercise that brought out so many lessons," she said. Participants agreed the exercise was much more realistic than expected.
"This is such a great opportunity for us to work together in this environment and learn from each other. We aren't often given this type of opportunity," a local police officer told Ms. Skoglund.
Each training exercise enhances Scripps' education efforts tremendously, allowing everyone involved in disaster preparedness coordination to review and update policy and procedure based on exercise feedback, new tactics and methods used by law enforcement, as well as new technology and processes.
5. Despite the successful completion of the exercise and the invaluable experience it lends, it's important to remember that real life catastrophes often come without warning, unlike a planned simulation. When the exercise ended, Mr. Van Gorder asked a SWAT team controller how he thought the exercise went. "There's what we hope for, there's what we train for, and then comes reality," the SWAT team controller responded.
"There will never be a real incident that works like a script," Mr. Van Gorder explained, "but the ability of police officers, rescuers, staff and even incident commanders to be flexible and adjust to the reality based on past training and experience will be the difference in the end. We pray we will never need to use the skills learned but we need to prepare for this just like we would for any disaster."
While every Scripps employee does not participate in the training events, everyone receives annual safety and security training and review of policies and response codes.