Training to cope with the unthinkable

Preparing for the worst is part of nursing, too. How about preparing for the unthinkable? In cooperation with the International Chemical Workers Union Council, Lutheran Medical Center nurses are doing just that as the UFT conducted a four-day disaster training class at union headquarters this spring on what to do if the city is attacked with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

left to right: Lutheran nurses Maureen English, Renee Gestone-Setteducato, Mavis Duffus and Nelly Perez with Jihad Hamad, Lutheran’s nurse manager for critical care.

The course, "Protection of Hospital Personnel and Patients in Response to a Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction Attack,” and funded by a grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, used lectures, exercises and a simulated decontamination scenario to show participants how to analyze and critique their hospital plan and their role in responding to an event. Course attendees learned how their hospital plans are coordinated on a city, county and state level and investigated methods for decontaminating patients who have been exposed to a wide variety of biological, toxicological and nuclear agents, and compared methods that would protect themselves and other health-care providers during decontamination of patients.

Participants also identified the major routes of entry, target organs, and signs and symptoms of WMD agents, identified key elements of a hospital-patient decontamination plan as well as how hospital emergency responses fit into the local community's Incident Command System.

The course was geared to intensive-care-unit and recovery-room nurses. Lutheran’s emergency room staff previously took the course.

Attendees responded enthusiastically, UFT Special Representative Hope Willocks said.

"This course was a model of cooperation between the union and management. And it was an important opportunity for nurses to get hands-on training, especially in this confusing age of bioterrorism," she said.

Renee Gestone-Setteducato, the Lutheran Medical Center chapter leader, said the course "opened my eyes and made me more aware of things that can occur and how to deal with them. We were only familiar with our direct areas of work. Now we realize that we are part of the whole system.

It also alleviated many fears, the chapter leader said. “I'm more confident, because now we have knowledge of OSHA regulations and our rights as workers which you can be sure we will bring back to the workplace."