Penn’s Medical Emergency Response Team conducted its biannual Mass Casualty Incident drill on March 25.
The training is a simulation MERT coordinators put on to prepare their emergency medical technicians for the possibility of a medical emergency on campus. The drill was held at the Palestra from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m.
The Philadelphia Fire Department and Penn Division of Public Safety were present on the scene, alongside an estimated 25 volunteers from Penn, Drexel, and Temple University. The volunteers, who were unaffiliated with MERT, posed as victims to simulate the aftermath of a bleacher collapse.
The response, which spanned close to an hour, was initiated when MERT Chief and College junior Max Yang sent an organization-wide alert to all responding EMTs. Within one minute, 35 EMTs arrived at the scene, and the simulation was underway.
“What happened?” “Ma’am, can you hear us?” “Sir, if you can hear my voice, come towards me,” were among the frequent callouts that could be heard from the in-action EMTs.
Multicolored triage tarps labeled ‘triage,’ ‘immediate,’ ‘delay,’ and ‘morgue’ served as designated care stations for patients. The tarps covered nearly the length of the hallway.
The EMTs assessed the urgency of patients’ injuries, loaded them onto backboards, and transported them to their necessary destinations. They used compresses, oxygen masks, and bandages throughout the course of the drill.
While MCIs such as these are rare, that hasn’t stopped MERT from preparing themselves to the maximum.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The purpose of this, as with all public safety and response, is we hope that nothing like this will ever actually occur…we wish no harm on anybody," College sophomore and MERT Disaster Response Team Officer Chris Cappiola said. "But we want to be ready, just in case. Because, unfortunately, in the world we live in, scary things do sometimes happen, and as part of Penn’s emergency system we want to make sure that if anything like that does happen that we’re ready to go."
Past drill situations have included a bus crash and a chemical explosion and spill.
“I think our EMTs get some experience in high-stress environments by doing drills like this. There’s a lot more communication and coordination involved. Having this many patients is a really good way to both heighten clinical skills as well as judgment [and] quick decision making,” Yang said.
MERT is integrated into Penn’s emergency response system so that, in the event of an on-campus MCI, all MERT EMTs would receive an immediate and detailed phone message informing them of the nature of the incident, where to go, and what to do.
“These types of drills are meant to prepare us in the event that [such an incident] would ever actually happen. Making these events more realistic is always something we try to do to make them as applicable as possible to our EMTs,” Yang said.
Volunteer feedback after the drill was positive.
“I was pretty impressed. They were really professional, but [also] compassionate,” Jillian Troth, a volunteer at the event and College sophomore, said. “They were really just great.”
MERT will continue to hold similar MCI drills in the future. The next training is set to occur in fall 2023.
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