Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center officials said they were pleased Thursday morning with the response to a mock tornado modeled after a real 1975 twister that ruined parts of the area and killed nine people.
Medical officials, first responders and emergency providers met Thursday afternoon to debrief about the county-wide annual disaster drill that started at 5:30 that morning.
The hospital’s Director of Clinical and Community Health Education Ellen Brannan said the test went well in general and that nursing facilities in partnership with the hospital did a good job.
Brannan reminded team leaders and department heads from various medical and emergency management departments that in case of emergency they should immediately reach out to local emergency management officials and the Mississippi Department of Health.
That procedure is especially important if providers believe patient care might be compromised, Brannan said.
Hospital command staff should report their situations to Pike County Civil Defense Director Richard Coghlan because he is able to connect directly with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, which Brannan said she cannot do.
In light of the varied challenges, Brannan said that each facility would have to prepare individualized procedures in case of emergency.
“Every facility had a bit of a different challenge,” she said.
Brannan said the simulation went well for those at the hospital. A weather center alert came in at 5:30 a.m. when the mock tornado touched down at Percy Quin State Park. She said agencies throughout the county did a good job about communicating resource availability to the McComb hospital.
Brannan said the drill is important for the hospital’s emergency response system.
“Trying to simulate a timeline is a challenge for everyone,” she said.
Brannan reminded staff that a lot of the work comes after the disaster is over and department heads need to remember to provide incident command with an after-action report in case of a real emergency.
“What’s our number-one priority?” Brannan asked.
“Safety,” people in the room replied.
One nurse mentioned that he was nervous before the drill but now feels better prepared if anything were to happen.
One issue that many administrators noticed was that at the beginning of the simulation, the nurse in charge of coordinating the emergency response was too tied up on the phone alerting other members of staff to the emergency, and was not able to efficiently run the hospital. Instead, that nurse was forced to delegate responsibility to other staff.
“That’s a good point,” Brannan said. ‘How will you get information from your facility to the incident commander?”
She said that department heads need to think about their off-duty staff in case of emergency.
“I needed to find out if my off-duty staff were OK. Did you reach out?” she asked. “Respond and let me know, are you safe and can you come in?”
Brannan said pre-planned group text messages could make a big difference in case of emergency and suggested that each administrator develop lists of phone numbers to call. She also noted that not every department heads received notification of the drill.
“Communication needs to improve,” Brannan said.
She said 29 off-duty employees showed up to constitute the available labor pool.
“This was our first time to do something so big at night,” Brannan said. “You’ve got to prepare your staff and let them know what the response plan should be. You’ve got to teach your staff how to respond.
“If you ever hear we’re operating under incident command, you better call me,” she said.
