Background

Since 2003, Dr. Laurie Mazurik and Dean Popov have planned and delivered over twenty full scale interprofessional disaster exercises across Ontario. From Columbine School shooting type incidents, sarin gas and car bombs, SARS overwhelming a hospital to simple building collapses and bus crashes, each event involved between 200 and 700 participants. Exercises incorporated a web site to prepare participants, a simulated incident and a simulated hospital. All events involved paramedics, fire services, police, students, hospital staff including physicians (including residents and fellows), nurses, respiratory therapists, social workers, chaplains, clerical staff, security volunteers, administration and other hospital support staff, including communications and information technology. Each exercise tested a Code Orange (hospital disaster plan) and often a community plan.

A gymasium with twenty beds was initially used to create the simulated hospital environment. More recently, this initiative has benefitted from a collaborative partnership with Centennial College under the leadership of Renée Kenny, Dean of the School of Community and Health Studies. Exercises are now based at the Centennial HP Science and Technology Centre which features extensive state-of-the-art health studies practice lab facilities including a simulated hospital with a twenty-four bed emergency department , sixteen bed intensive care unit, discharge unit, crisis center, media room, recovery room, day surgery and a hospital command centre. Through this partnership and the resources available through Centennial College, the fidelity of the event simulations rose significantly and we began building communications systems, testing new technologies for tracking patients and involving more and more students from different areas such as technology, media and food services.

In 2006, Centennial College, Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences, George Brown College, Ryerson University, and University of Toronto were jointly awarded a Health Canada Grant to build an interprofessional course that focused on patient-centered care in disasters. The objective was to start breaking down silos between professions at an undergraduate stage. The course employs online learning modules to study major events and with use of online discussion areas encourages students to explore team-building strategies together. Incorporated into the course is the innovative web-based multi-player simulation “game” Disaster Strikes! Students take on each other’s professional role as well as their own and focus on interprofessional learning and collaborative decision making. At the end of the course, students meet for the first time in a live, mass-casualty community exercise.

Beginning in 2007, IDEAS Network has planned and conducted a number of multi-sector hosted tabletop disaster simulation event with participation of many of the major corporate interests across Canada, allowing these organizations to come together in emergency operations centre mode, practice their emergency preparedness plans, identify what works, what doesn’t and engage in discussions focused on improving cross-sector oral collaboration.

All of us involved with building IDEAS Network have done so out of a passion to learn and share what we do. Our commitment is to see the philosophy of interprofessional collaboration grow and support organizations in building their resilience to major threats. A safer community will be the result.