Video by Kyle Buis, Dave Novick, and Rob Stewart
Emergency Medical Response training began in a statewide rollout in March. The program provides staff with the knowledge, skills and equipment needed to appropriately manage and handle medical alarm activations within our institutions. Six months after an institution completes the extensive training, they are put through a drill.
None was bigger than the one at California State Prison, Sacramento, where dozens of volunteers participated in a scenario to test both custody and health care staff. Three separate incidents over the course of an hour tested their resources and response. But the training paid off and the staff handled the mass casualty incident drill well.
The video is also available on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JMAB1rVfqY0
Transcript
(Alarm buzzing)
Get on the ground
Get down! Get down!
Be advised we have multiple inmates fighting on the C Facility main yard
Be advised I do need medical response BOP Treatment Center.
We have multiple inmates fighting in the gym. I need a Code 1 response.
Anatole Moore
Working with three incidents going on simultaneously stretched our resources, but they responded well.
Rain was an unexpected pleasure, but you know, it really brings a real-life situation.
The rain causes us sometimes to slow down and be a little bit safer.
We had no injuries.
I think we had somewhere upward of 400 total staff members who were participating in this drill.
George Gomez
Training helps the multiple disciplines prepare for a mass incident like you guys saw today in regards to dealing with not just the safety of our staff and our officers, our health care and our nurses, but also in treating our patients the right way.
Tameka Thorpe
We have brand-new tools such as the HyFin chest seal, the quick clot, the tourniquets, and then we also had the staff go through 40 hours of training for the new EMR program, and so I felt like it was overall just amazing.
The staff really felt confident in what they did and performed really well.
Moore
We do a mass casualty training once a year, usually around September, October.
The biggest change was we opened up our new building last June and we’re still adjusting to the logistics of having a central health service building that all the yards empty into one.
With the larger building, we learned that we can now be a more fluid, a more controlled situation, for both custody and for health care because everyone flows through that one central building, and we’re very pleased with how they were able to utilize it and display what they learned in a real-life situation when they’re training.