Tallahassee Memorial Hospital’s trauma center was the scene of a realistic mass shooting response exercise on Friday, May 20. Scores of badly “wounded” patients tried to push the facility and its staff to the limit.
As the first of many ambulances arrived, trauma team members raced to get the imaginary shooting victim into the nearest triage room.
FSU students played the part of the victims, several with makeup simulating bullet wounds.
As patients kept coming, TMH Emergency Services Exec Kyrie Thomas explained the complexities involved.
“It’s a team effort in terms of getting these patients to the hospital, getting them triaged appropriately, and then getting those EMS resources back out into the community to help the additional patients that they need to.”
The hospital’s Emergency Management Chief Philip Doyles said a post-exercise review would provide guidance for future drills.
“Put together all of our lessons learned and in the next drill we’ll test to see what new things we put in place to see how it impacted from the last drill.”
The simulation represents an ongoing process in place to better prepare emergency staff for possible future events.
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