Simulation of a hospital disaster plan: a virtual, live exercise

Area of Science:

• Emergency Medicine
• Disaster Preparedness
• Health Informatics

Background:

• No standardized method currently exists for evaluating emergency department disaster plans.
• A standardized patient database and virtual live exercise can provide a reproducible evaluation method.

Purpose of the Study:

• Primary objective: Evaluate a hospital's emergency department disaster plan.
• Secondary objective: Provide education and training for participants.

Main Methods:

• Created a database (disastermed.ca) with 136 simulated patient cases based on real encounters.
• Conducted a virtual, live exercise using a training version of the emergency department information system.

Main Results:

• Identified solutions to improve patient flow and critical faults in the disaster plan.
• Demonstrated significant under-triage and compared patient flow markers to Canadian guidelines.
• Participants found the exercise to be a valuable learning experience.

Conclusions:

• Virtual exercises with simulated patient databases are inexpensive for evaluating emergency department disaster plans.
• The method aids in discovering new patient management strategies, identifying bottlenecks, and assessing triage accuracy.
• Patient timestamps offer potential as an international benchmark for disaster plan efficacy, with high participant satisfaction.