The Value of Functional Exercise in Pediatric Mass- Casualty Incident Training

Hospital staff in Taiwan practice mass casualty incident (MCI) management through full-scale exercise (FSE). However, FSE is generally resource-intensive and time-consuming. As an alternative, functional exercise (FE) may be more cost-effective with a similar effect in certain aspects. Hence, we aimed to evaluate the FE value in MCI training. We investigated whether FE can increase the familiarity of pediatric MCI response and the effect in different groups.

A new emergency operation plan (EOP) of nontraumatic pediatric MCI was developed in 2018 for our Children's Hospital. An FE was conducted to assess the plan. In addition to the emergency department staff, head nurses, supervisors, and physicians of Children's Hospital also participated in the exercise. Pre- and post-exercise questionnaires were designed, and participants were asked to evaluate their familiarity with pediatric MCI response pre- and post-exercise. Participants' reading experience of the new EOP, previous training level, occupation position, and whether they were using a computer during the exercise were also noted in the questionnaires. Data were analyzed using paired t-test and Fisher's exact test.

Among 49 participants, 16 participants completed the pre- and post-exercise questionnaires. The post-exercise familiarity score was found to be significantly higher than that of pre-exercise (p < 0.05). There were no significant differences among the relationships between familiarity increase and participants' reading experience of the new EOP, previous training level, occupation position, and whether they were using a computer during the exercise.

FE can significantly increase the familiarity of the hospital staff with pediatric MCI response and may be applied as a new training method of hospital disaster preparedness.