Students at Rocky Vista University Practice Caring for Victims of a Mass Casualty Event

By Stephen J. Miller, DO, MPH, FACOFP, Senior Associate Dean of Clinical Education at Rocky Vista University

On April 29, 2023, at 1:00 p.m., Rocky Vista University’s Ivins campus experienced the horror and chaos of a student center bombing.

You may not have heard or read about this incident in the news because it was just a simulated practice event to mimic what would greet first responders if the bombing was real. But because it looked real, it felt real to the first responders—from school medical students to police and fire rescue—as they encountered many injured and bleeding “victims,” some moving, others motionless.

And that’s the point. Victims of a mass casualty event require tremendous amounts of medical and emotional support immediately and to such a great extent that first responders can be easily overwhelmed. Individual training and preparation complemented by group practice are the keys to being effective care workers when faced with such chaos and tragedy. “The event was beneficial in many ways,” said Andy Nigh, MD and Assistant Professor of Surgery. “Students learned the value of teamwork, both at the planning level and as they took care of simulated patients. They learned and practiced communication skills and how to work while under pressure.”

Simulated disasters, like the one conducted at Rocky Vista University, require hours of planning and coordinating in order to be successful. Student doctor Brogan Crocket, OMS-I, MS, MHA, NR-P, was involved in logistical planning for the Rocky Vista event. “It required attending and participating in multi-agency meetings held with Santa ClaraIvins (SCI) Public Safety, SCI Fire Rescue, Washington County Bomb Squad, and various RVU departments,” he said. “Prior to the simulation, we also worked through our patient cases and outlined our training.”

The event was the third to date to be sponsored and run by RVU in conjunction with local and county emergency response units. Because it was a bombing, those first responders included tactical response teams who worked together to plan their roles for such a catastrophe, preparing their units separately and together prior to the event and then responding in a coordinated effort to help victims and protect all from the perpetrators of a bombing.

“We really appreciate the partnership we have with Santa ClaraIvins Fire and Rescue and with the Police Department and Washington County Bomb Squad,” said Kelly Schroeder, manager of public safety and security at the RVU Ivins campus “It’s great for our groups to learn how we can respond to emergencies together. We want them in our building. It helps all of us if they know the layout and landscape should a real emergency come up, and it helps our students learn how to work alongside emergency personnel.”

As a co-organizer of the event, Kelly Dinh, OMSII and President of the Wilderness Medicine Student Interest Group, explained the importance of the event and the positive effect it would have on the community in the future. According to Dinh, the simulated bombing allowed school, local, and county officials to plan and analyze outcomes of a practice event in order to respond as a cohesive, effective group should a mass casualty event occur. “We had over seventy-five RVU students and more than twenty community volunteers as patient actors,” she said. “We had involvement from the police department, fire department, school security, and bomb squad. We started our planning during the summer of 2022, and because many of us had participated in previous mass casualty events, we had a lot of new ideas and suggestions for improvements, and we had the vision to carry it out. It was a team effort as we connected with the departments of public safety to draft and execute the plan, develop the medical cases, and train the students.”

Mark Wardle, DO summarized the success of this collaborative mass casualty training event in this way: “During the exercise, one of the ‘mass casualty victims’ simulated a precipitous delivery of her baby followed by heavy postpartum bleeding. It was heartening to see the students not only remember to stay calm and think critically to address the medical needs of this patient but to also remember to address her specific emotional and personal needs as well.”

Rocky Vista University will continue to plan and execute such simulated events in cooperation with local and county officials in order to improve readiness to respond to a mass casualty.