BackgroundAccording to the Belgian Hospital Disaster Planning Act, all hospitals are required to have written disaster plans and to routinely conduct annual disaster drills. In 2010, the management of the Military Hospital decided to organize an evacuation exercise of the newly built 24-bed BU.AimTo evaluate this new BU's evacuation plan and drills and the overall hospital emergency incident response and command system.Methods and ResultsIt was decided to conduct a simulated evacuation exercise following an internal fire, before the BU effectively was put into use, thereby deploying fashioned simulated patients and visitors but bringing into action the regular attending medical, nursing and logistic staff. A multidisciplinary design and organizing team was launched, consisting of the hospitals disaster preparedness coordinator, the EMS-staff, external burn care, emergency incident management and operational engineering experts. The appointed objectives for evaluation were the knowledge of the regular evacuation drills, especially the clearance of an intensive care room; access to evacuation routes; visibility of safety guidelines; mission and tasks of the hospital's first response team and the medical incident manager; communication and information flow and the establishment of the hospital's coordination committee. In the mean time and following lessons learned, a number of mitigation measures have been instituted: adequate identification of evacuated rooms, new configuration of the fire detection alarm, optimized access to stairwells and elevators, adjustment of action cards and specific fire fighting training for hospital staff. Finally the decision was made not to purchase specific evacuation equipment for the movement of patients.ConclusionTaking advantage of the BU's provisional vacancy, a simulated hospital evacuation exercise increased the hospital emergency preparedness, awareness and response to disasters within the hospital, in particular in a critical care department, otherwise difficult to assess.
Lessons Learned From a Large Cross-Border Field Simulation Exercise to Strengthen Emergency Preparedness in East Africa, 2019
