Cushing Memorial Hospital's hazardous materials response team held a drill last week to ensure smooth hospital operations should a HazMat incident, such as a chemical spill, happen within the community. The drill took place Aug. 7 in the hospital's emergency department parking lot.
"Though gross decontamination would occur at the incident site by fire department personnel, some patients may come directly to the hospital on their own, and we would need to make sure they are fully decontaminated," said Greg Morgan, emergency preparedness coordinator at Cushing Memorial Hospital.
The drill started with team members being paged, reporting for duty, and setting up the mobile decontamination tent with access to water supply.
The team also put on personal protective equipment.
Hospital junior volunteers, who acted as mock victims, were brought to the site with cards stating signs and symptoms of organophosphate exposure, for them to act out while going through the line.
"The drill provided us with a lot of information to improve our process," Morgan said.
Hospital plans call for the drill to be conducted annually. The Cushing Memorial Hospital HazMat Response team consists of Mike Briney, Becky Kobler, Liz Litteral, Tammie McCutchen, Greg Morgan, Tiffany Parker, Karin Sundblom and Dawn Hudson.
Leavenworth, Kan. —
