On October 19, 2017 the Knox/East Tennessee Healthcare Coalition hosted our first pediatric focused mass casualty full scale exercise. This was the culmination of nearly two years of pediatric focused planning, training, resource coordinating, and exercising. During this exercise, we surged nearly 350 patients into our community hospitals with the vast majority of them being pediatric patients. We have no doubt that many lessons learned will be identified and many planning and preparedness gaps will be addressed as a result of this exercise.
We are ecstatic to report that we had participation from 21 hospitals in the KETHC and many of our other partners including the Regional Forensic Center, Medic Regional Blood Bank, Tennessee Department of Health, Knox County Health Department, and numerous others. We are also grateful for support provided from our emergency management and response organization friends who served as exercise controllers, evaluators, and subject matter experts at many locations throughout the region. Pulling off an exercise of this scale is a TEAM effort and we have the BEST TEAM AROUND!
Please check out this short video that our friends at Knox County Health Department produced about the exercise. It features our Knox County Schools Career and Technical Education Health Science Students acting as the victims (another WONDERFUL partnership): https://youtu.be/ktxB6icenMo
We will have a future post with pictures from the exercise from our coalition members.