Mock bus crash tests emergency system
A test of the valley’s readiness for a mass emergency involving children unfolded Thursday morning as nurses applied fake blood and injury simulations to roughly 20 students in the Kalispell Regional Medical Center Emergency Department.
As a nurse showed several youths how to show symptoms of a concussion, Dr. Robyn Whalen with Kalispell Regional looked at her watch and said, “We have until 8:41 until the ‘bus crashes.’”
The exercise was a collaboration between Kalispell Regional, North Valley Hospital, Flathead County Office of Emergency Services and Flathead County schools. The simulated school bus accident and patient-care follow-up took place in both hospitals’ emergency departments and at a virtual off-site location.
Mellody Sharpton with Kalispell Regional said the trial was part of local agencies’ continual effort to update their readiness skills for worst-case scenarios.
Sharpton looked around the room filled with students, nurses and emergency responders.
“It’s funny, we wouldn’t be standing around waiting for the announcement of an accident in the real scenario,” she said. “But this is important to practice … in my 13 years here, nothing like this has happened. But it very well could and it’s important we all know how to work together if it does.”
Minutes later, 911 text alerts announced the drill mass casualty and described a bus rollover with responders initiating triage on 30 to 50 patients.
Students wore pink envelopes around their necks that included their description and a photo taken of them when they entered the ER.
Ryan Pitts, the drill coordinator and a Kalispell Regional charge nurse, said when a patient is unidentifiable in a real scenario, hospital staffers would use the photo system to reunite parents with their children.
“This drill is another way to practice this new effort,” Pitts said. “In the past, parents would have to walk throughout the ER looking at patients as they look for their kid. That’s obviously a hard thing for them to go through and gets complicated when patients are delivered to multiple locations.”
He said if a mass casualty event takes place in the future, people looking for their loved ones would meet in a designated room where photos hang of unidentified patients, along with their description and where they’re located.
Thursday morning, a woman in an Evergreen Fire Rescue uniform worked alongside a nurse to begin ushering students into the emergency room as other volunteers walked around the room instructing remaining youths on their injuries.
“Remember, you were just in a bus accident, so you’re a little in shock,” a nurse said to a fake patient. “You were the bus driver, so while you have chest pain and shortness of breath, you keep asking how the kids are.”
As she walked away, a teacher approached the boy and said, “OK man, show me chest pain — go!” The boy grabbed his heart, laughing a little while he began to pant and run through his lines. Another student walked in the background talking with friends while holding part of a tree out of his neck.
Dr. Whalen said while the scene appeared more like a school play than an emergency, drills such as this that help her, other health-care workers and emergency responders know what to do when the real worst-case scenario unfolds.
She said having youths explain an imaginary injury is good practice for ER workers to quickly identify when someone has a serious injury such as a punctured lung or head trauma.
“It’s about muscle memory,” Whalen said, adding that when the real thing comes, a professional’s mind and body need to work together to save as many people as possible.
Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.