Abstract

Few established curricula are available for teaching disaster medicine. We describe a comprehensive, multi-modality approach focused on simulation to teach disaster medicine to emergency medicine residents in a 3-year curriculum.Residents underwent a 3-year disaster medicine curriculum incorporating a variety of venues, personnel, and roles. The curriculum included classroom lectures, tabletop exercises, virtual reality simulation, high-fidelity simulation, hospital disaster drills, and journal club discussion. All aspects were supervised by specialty emergency medicine faculty and followed a structured debriefing. Residents rated the high-fidelity simulations by using a 10-point Likert scale.Three classes of emergency medicine residents participated in the 3-year training program. Residents found the exercise to be realistic, educational, and relevant to their practice. After participating in the program, residents felt better prepared for future disasters.Given the large scope of impact that disasters potentiate, it is understandably difficult to teach these skills effectively. Training programs can utilize this simulation-based curriculum to better prepare the nation's emergency medicine physicians for future disasters. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;0:1-4).

View details for DOI 10.1017/dmp.2016.8

View details for PubMedID 27040319