UD, Christiana Care join in health crisis drill

5 p.m., Nov. 4, 2004--UD’s Student Health Service sent 160 “paper patients” to Christiana Hospital’s emergency department Thursday afternoon, Oct. 28, to test the preparedness of both organizations to deal with a hypothetical health crisis on campus.

According to the drill’s scenario, 160 students who ate grilled chicken at an off-campus cookout had developed severe symptoms of food-borne illness and were overwhelming the resources of the Student Health Service.

“The Student Health Service provides excellent care on a one-to-one basis for anywhere from 200 to 280 patients per day, but we wanted to see how we would handle that same number over only a few hours in a crisis situation,” Dr. Joseph Siebold, Student Health Service director, said.

Christiana Care Health System, which conducts medical disaster drills at least twice a year, asked UD to participate in the exercise to help test its response capabilities.

“Christiana Care is required as part of its national accreditation process to challenge its ER with an influx of a large number of patients over a short timeframe,” Siebold said. “They wanted to be sure they could treat, track and account for all of our patients, including some who would have to be diverted to other area hospitals.”

To work through the mock campus health crisis, Siebold convened a small group of UD administrators in the Student Health Service conference room at 2 p.m. that day. Participants included representatives from Campus Life, Occupational Safety and Health, Facilities, Public Safety, Public Relations and Transportation.

At 2:20 p.m., Dr. Siebold called the chief physician in the emergency department at Christiana Hospital to alert him to the developing health “crisis” on campus. After weighing their options, the health crisis team at UD decided to transport the fictitious student patients by UD buses to the emergency department at Christiana Hospital without delay. At 2:30 p.m., Siebold called the Christiana Hospital ER to advise the staff there that 160 paper patients were on their way and in need of immediate treatment.

At that point, Christiana Hospital declared a “Code Delta,” which mobilizes all of its resources to respond to a medical disaster involving many patients. In response to the Code Delta declaration, designated emergency medicine, nursing, pharmacy, patient services, public safety, public relations and housekeeping services managers converged on the underground command center at Christiana Hospital. The group worked through the crisis drill under the supervision of Gary Ferguson, chief operating officer at Christiana Care.

Thirteen additional emergency department staff, including doctors, nurses and residents, responded to emergency Code Delta calls and pages. As the paper patients arrived at the ER, each represented by a UD Student Health Services’ patient transfer form detailing patient information, they were triaged according to the severity of their symptoms.

Fifty “patients” remained in the ER, 40 were sent to the adjacent outpatient surgery center, 30 were transported to the physical therapy department gym at Wilmington Hospital and 40 were diverted to the St. Francis Hospital emergency department in Wilmington for treatment. By 4 p.m., 25 fictitious patients with the most severe symptoms had been admitted to Christiana Hospital. At 4:08 p.m., Christiana Care terminated the Code Delta drill and began debriefing staff members to determine what lessons had been learned.

“Please thank everyone at UD who participated and made this a good learning experience for us,” Brian Humphrey, administrative projects coordinator at Christiana Care, wrote to Siebold after the disaster drill.

“The drill accomplished what the hospital intended, and it forced our planning group to look at different scenarios regarding the transportation of large numbers of sick students,” Lawrence Thornton, UD’s Public Safety director, said. “It is clear our transportation unit has plans in place to transport large numbers of sick persons with very little notice.”

“In the weeks before the drill, all permanent Student Health Service staff members were involved in reviewing and updating our policies and procedures for responding to this type of crisis,” Siebold said. “The drill definitely accomplished the objectives of both the Student Health Service and Christiana Care. There were no major surprises, and the UD group did a very skillful job of adapting to ‘what ifs?’”

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