# 1047
While no drill is likely to fully prepare a hospital or health department for a real pandemic, they can be useful tools. Drills often show where problems are likely to occur, and may lead to improvements in training and equipment.
Just as importantly, they raise awareness.
For far too many people the prospect of a pandemic is more of a science fiction or disaster movie scenario. They regard it as unlikely to happen. And that includes hospital employees.
Hopefully, drills like the ones mentioned below will help change that mindset.
Bird flu drill prepares hospitals for the real thing
By JESSICA COSDEN
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
A woman walked into the Cape Coral Hospital emergency room Tuesday afternoon complaining of a fever and nasty cough. Throughout her stay, her condition would demand the resources and energy of nearly every department in the hospital, from the emergency room to the morgue. The health department and Centers for Disease Control would also be involved.
Emergency room nurse Trish Laub, left, diligently takes notes as she plays the victim and is whisked out of the emergency room and to the intensive care unit by ER director Polly Spate, center, and respiratory therapist Nicole Noonan, right, at Cape Coral Hospital on Tuesday. They were participating in a mock drill centered around two cases of bird flu. Lee Memorial Health Systems staged the pandemic drill at the hospital to assess the needs of hospital patients and employees in the event of a bird flu case.
It was all part of an avian flu exercise, the first of its kind in Southwest Florida. Health officials are no longer questioning whether the bird flu pandemic could hit the area; it’s more a matter of when.
The question is this: how prepared are we?
Tuesday’s scenario gave hospital staff a glimpse.
It was one of four drills taking place this week at the hospitals of Lee Memorial Health System, said coordinator Connie Bowles. Hospital employees coordinated with the county health department for the exercise.
“This was to raise awareness, to stimulate conversation and thought,” said Bowles, a registered nurse. Officials have been working on plans to apply in an actual incident, and what they learned Tuesday will be included in those plans, she said.
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