Community

East Ohio Regional Hospital Staff Put Their Readiness to the Test

East Ohio Regional Hospital's staff were in action Monday morning, testing their readiness as part of a drill involving 30-40 hospitals throughout Ohio.

Kayla Shreve, the hospital's public information officer, said the drill began in the early hours of Monday morning and was completed fairly quickly.

"It went very well. It was actually one of the more mild drills that we'd done," she said.

The drill was titled "Aluminum Avalanche" and involved multiple injuries and traumas.

"The scenario was there were bleachers at a local fairgrounds that collapsed," she said. "We, through the exercise, accepted 16 patients who came through our (emergency department) that we either transferred out or we took care of, sent to surgery, placed on one of our floors, whatever that might be. It went very smooth. Our ED did an amazing job."

Shreve said this called for invoking mass-event protocols and putting the hospital staff on alert. The operation commander for the majority of the incident was Administrator Bernie Albertini.

Shreve said the drill planners complicated the scenario with a computer system crash, making electronic medical records inaccessible and calling on the staff to fall back to paper records for documentation. That was just one of many variables thrown at hospital staff throughout the drill to make sure they're ready for anything.

Shreve said staff did all they could to simulate reality.

"We did have nursing students that were here that acted as our patients for us in the simulation," she said. "That helped out a ton. It's hard to not have a live person and just pretend."

Shreve commended Brad Simms, incident commander and safety officer, for his work in making sure staff have access to information on what to do in an emergency.

A roundtable discussion followed the drill and discussions about where they could improve.

"We also give feedback, if we think the drill was helpful, if we think anything could be improved upon on that end of things," she said.

"It's a very good drill, because it does just put you in that scenario. It shows whether an organization works as a well-oiled machine together, or if it doesn't, and luckily everything went very smooth for us. Bernie has a ton of years' experience doing this, so he's a great commander. He knows how to move through all of the scenarios very quickly. He knows just who to call, what to do," Shreve said.

"It definitely gave peace of mind to let you know that your organization is capable of taking on these things, God forbid anything ever does happen."