Managing Multiple-Casualty Incidents A Rural Medical Preparedness Training Assessment

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of a training model for using mass-casualty incident (MCI) scenarios that trained hospital and prehospital staff together during a one-day training comprised of 2 one-hour functional exercises; 4 distinct, one-hour didactic instructional periods (communications, National Incident Management Systems/Incident Command Systems (NIMS/ICS) and professional roles and responsibilities in NIMS and triage); and 2 MCI functional exercises. Improvements in post-test scores were noted for participants from all disciplines and in all didactic areas. Based on these results, the authors advocate for multidisciplinary MCI training that utilizes real data about a community’s response resources.