I am organizing a disaster preparedness simulation day for pre-hospital, first responder and emergency department personnel in Kigali Rwanda. Disaster response is an area that was identified as needing improvement by the federal government and medical personnel have expressed interest in receiving additional training. We are creating educational modules that participants will review prior to the simulation. Then, in January, we will run two simulation sessions to practice the skills learned during the modules. We will assess pre and post-scenario knowledge, attitudes and practice immediately after the simulation, at 6 months and at 1 year. If this program is successful, we will repeat the program at other sites.
Disasters are rare but high-impact occurrences. There are increasing numbers of natural disasters secondary to floodings in Rwanda. By training the emergency personnel in Kigali, we hope to benefit the large population of the city and surroundings should a disaster occur. Our department already has an established relationship with this hospital system to facilitate this training.
As described above, the impact of this training will mostly be seen in mass casualty or disaster settings. There has been no such training as of yet. We hope to initiate disaster preparedness education into the regular curriculum. We are starting with about 40 individuals but plan on returning to engage more participants within Kigali and then distribute to the more rural areas. We are also going to engage participants as trainers of the material to bolster our effects.
During this trip, we had a hands-on skills training session with civilian first responders, paramedics, emergency nurses and physicians. They practiced hemorrhage control techniques, triage scenarios and patient flow simulations. This is part of a larger project to develop and evaluate a mass casualty incident response program for these groups in Kigali, Rwanda. Prior to this training day, participants had watched online modules to learn about the topics we practiced.
