Disaster 101 Workshop

 

Disaster 101 is an immersive simulation workshop that is designed especially for health science students in Public Health, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Veterinary Medicine, and Dentistry at the University of Minnesota.

Disaster 101 is a collaboration of the School of Public Health, the AHC Office of Emergency Response, the Center for Interprofessional Education, and the AHC Simulation Center/IERC, with input from community Emergency Medicine physicians and EMTs.

  

 

Description 

 

Disaster 101 is part of a research program to assess the effectiveness of live simulations for teaching emergency response skills and is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Skills emphasized in the didactic and simulation portions of the workshop correspond to national standards and best practices in individual and team response.

Students will be assigned to multi-professional teams, but will not be assigned profession-specific roles (e.g. nursing students will not “play” a nurse). As in real emergencies, participants will be called upon to identify the nature of the emergency, identify a leader, and respond based on their skills sets, rather than their professional affiliation. Trained facilitators – emergency physicians, EMTs, and paramedics – will observe, evaluate and give feedback to each team. Student teams will have the opportunity to practice new skills following the feedback and experience more than one kind of clinical challenge relevant to each simulated emergency.

While this workshop will provide training, practice, and assessment in team and individual skills, it is also important to point out what it is not: Disaster 101 will not qualify students to serve as first-responders. The researchers responsible for creating it hope that students will come away with a much deeper appreciation of how difficult disasters are to respond to and how they can help themselves and others in a community emergency. What’s more, they hope that students will be able to take the skills that they learn in this experience and apply them in their clinical education as they complete their professional training and move into the health care workforce.

 

 

 

 

Registration is coordinated by Jody Tracy at 612-626-9956 or tracy122@umn.edu. Please remember that registration will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Applicants who register after the slots are filled will be put on a waiting list. All applicants will also have the opportunity to register for future Disaster 101 workshops.

 

Students are encouraged to take the Campus Connector to the St. Paul Campus. The Campus Connector stops every 5 minutes at the Washington Avenue bus stop in front of Moos Tower and Weaver-Densford Hall. The bus ride to the St. Paul Student Center takes approximately 15 minutes. The Continuing Education and Conference Center is a 5 minute walk from the bus stop. For a map of the St. Paul Campus, click here.

If necessary, students may also drive, but should contact Annamay Snyder for parking information at least 72 hours prior to the workshop.

 

 

 

See the Disaster 101 FAQs, or contact Annamay Snyder, Disaster 101 Program Coordinator (612-626-6339 or snyd0100@umn.edu).