By Danielle Salisbury
Citizen Patriot
JACKSON, Mich. — A Jackson police officer posing as an active shooter calmly entered rooms on the sixth floor of Henry Ford Allegiance Health’s new patient tower.
He aimed a toy gun at players and air-filled dummies. In the aftermath, hospital and community leaders gathered around a boardroom table and learned they had 10 critical patients and 15 others with lesser injuries.
Had this been real life, it would have been horrifying.
“I had goosebumps when the police started coming in,” said Joann Hellberg, a hospital volunteer who was to hide under a front desk as the “shooter” arrived. “It was too real, or so it seemed. Because you know it could be.”
The hospital on Wednesday staged a full-scale emergency exercise of a mass shooting at the main campus at 205 N. East Ave. It was designed to test its response, and the response of several other involved agencies, including police and emergency medical staff.
This was one of several such scenarios enacted annually at the hospital to prepare the health system for natural disasters, infectious disease outbreaks and other events.
“We hope it never happens. If it does, we want to be ready,” said Ondrea Bates, HFAH senior vice president for operations.
She was observing the exercise, played out in the empty floor, cluttered with boxes and plastic-covered furniture in advance of its public grand opening on Aug. 26.
The area, a perfect setting to avoid disruption to normal hospital operations, was quiet until Jackson police officers and Jackson County sheriff’s deputies, with guns drawn, began clearing every room, looking first for the shooter.
In the scenario, he had shot himself in the head and was on the ground just beyond a hallway bend.
“Gunman down,” one officer announced.
Police, firefighters and Jackson Community Ambulance personnel then went in to assess the injuries. One actor, in scrubs, was stomach-down on the floor with fake blood on his back.
Another woman, a volunteer who works in information technology, had faux blood on her eye and was to pretend her hearing was compromised.
The hospital tested its communication systems, actually contacting a trauma team to handle an influx of patients in an emergency department that has 60 beds.
Staff practiced sending notifications to employees, who have access to a cell phone app, and their families. “If you are at home, you want to know,” Bates acknowledged.
She talked, too, of other considerations, automatically alerting leaders; replacing staff that have been injured, physically or otherwise; and handling the dead, however unpleasant.
“It gets pretty in-depth,” she said.
Later, in the control room, executives were thrown a curve ball, built into the drill because real-world scenarios do not come with advance scripts. They had to consider the hospital’s reaction to word there was a vehicle with a possible bomb parked outside the emergency department.
There were discussions about evacuations before Chris Jodoin, Henry Ford Allegiance Health emergency manager and Wednesday coordinator, informed them the “bomb” was only a bag or bags of fertilizer.
In the end, those involved in the exercise gathered in an auditorium to discuss strengths and weaknesses.
Wendy Boersma, chief nursing officer and incident commander, said the command center needed easy access to hospital floor plans and user-friendly manuals with a cheat sheet, or list of helpful or necessary numbers.
Chief Medical Officer Mark Smith said he found opportunities to improve internal communications, such as informing the trauma team, first instructed to run, fight or hide, when it was safe or clear to move about and treat patients.
This is as close to practicing the real thing as possible, he said. “I do think there is a lot to learn.”
Michigan State Police 1st Lt. Kevin Rod, commander of the Jackson post, noted a delay in distribution of initial information.
The first few minutes are critical, he said, because these shootings end in about 10 to 12 minutes. He mentioned the 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech, where 32 people died. He said this transpired in about seven minutes.
An exercise like this, he said at the event’s close, provides an opportunity to think about the processes.
It forces people into a position to consider the possibilities, he said.
Everyone benefits, said Jason Breining, emergency management program manager at the county sheriff’s office. He commended the exercise and how well all players worked together.
Copyright 2018 Citizen Patriot
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