With Super Bowl LX less than five months away, it’s not just Santa Clara’s Levi’s Stadium that’s preparing for the big event it’s also emergency responders and local hospitals. At O’Connor Hospital in San Jose on Oct. 2, dozens of hospital staff donned decontamination suits and took part in a mass casualty training exercise.
“We’re practicing in an exercise where there’s an actual explosion at Levi’s Stadium and there’s a chemical agent that was released,” said Sheila Tuna, the service line director of the disaster preparedness program for Santa Clara Valley Health Care. “So, we’re practicing injured patients coming to the hospital covered with a substance, so we have to decontaminate them before they enter the hospital.”
The “patients,” in this case, are nursing students from San Jose State University, who understand all too well that they may one day be on the other side of the equation. They leaned into their roles and tried to make the scenario as challenging and disruptive as possible for the staff. Many of them yelled things like, “My baby! Where is my baby?” and “Don’t touch me!” as they were processed, doing their best to simulate shocked and confused victims.
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Mariann Vaught, a registered nurse at the hospital, has experienced emergency situations like this firsthand. She says these training exercises are extremely useful.
“I’ve been in a situation where we were not prepared, and we got in a [large] amount of patients, and this is why I value this training,” said Vaught. “I just got back from FEMA training, and our training that we do here is very, very close to exactly what FEMA is doing all around the country.”
While there’s extra emphasis on training this year because of the upcoming events at Levi’s Stadium, these training sessions are not unusual. The hospital holds training sessions monthly.
“Disaster preparedness is a critical component of our preparation for any kind of disaster that may occur, an earthquake, an active shooter, anything that happens out in the community,” said Tuna. “So, we do trainings across the entire year, but most especially this is very important this year, and we’re focusing and emphasizing more on exercises because of the major sporting events coming up next year.”
Tuna says the most important thing is that the response becomes second nature to the staff if the real situation ever arises.
“We want people to be mentally prepared and have advanced training of what their role might be in a disaster,” said Tuna. “We want them to feel confident and reduce their staff anxiety. That’s why we do these trainings throughout the year, where we teach them how to triage patients. We teach them how to do hands on activities and set up a treatment area. We do actual drills where we have patients acting as patients and walking wounded. We put mannequins through there, acting as real injured patients. So, we try to make real life situations so that staff are ready and staff know what to do in this kind of situation.”
While O’Connor Hospital is the closest hospital to Levi’s Stadium, it is not the only hospital within the Santa Clara Valley Health Care system ready for a major disaster event. There are over 450 medical staff, including doctors and registered nurses, trained to respond to disaster situations.
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