COVID-19 drill readies ER staff for the inevitable

The Ottawa Hospital has been conducting pandemic drills with its emergency department personnel to prepare them for the special challenges of treating a large wave of sick and infectious patients.

ER doctors, respiratory therapists and nurses worked through a simulation on Friday designed to refine and streamline the safe treatment and transport of a severely ill patient in the midst of respiratory failure.

"The hospital is working really hard to be as prepared as we can be for these patients," said emergency physician George Mastoras.

Mastoras said the "dry run" is meant to ready staff on the front lines of a health-care emergency.

It's the same kind of simulation the hospital credits with saving lives after the Jan. 11 Westboro bus crash.

Earlier simulation saved lives

On Nov. 16, emergency physicians and nurses practised a Code Orange mass casualty emergency at the hospital.

Just two months later, adouble-decker OC Transpo bus slammed into a shelter overhang at the Transitway stop, killing three people and badly injuring many more.

"Every patient who was brought to this campus survived," said Dr. Glenn Posner, who oversawFriday's drill.

Friday's patient was a high-tech simulation mannequincapable of blinking, moaning and, if loaded in advance, even sneezing ultrasound gel from its nostrils.

Transporting contagious patients

Friday's training was intended to iron the wrinkles out of the process of having emergency physicians, respiratory therapists and nurses don and doff personal protective equipment, including N95 masks and clear plastic visors.

The hospital has also worked out the complicated process of how to transport contagious and seriously ill patients up to the hospital's intensive care unit.

To do that, asecurity team will create a perimeter as the patient is moved down the hallway to a service elevator. Housekeepers will follow, disinfecting the area.

"There's a lot of moving parts in a simulation like that," observed Dr. David Gruber, who led the intubation exercise in a sealed room with negative air pressure.

The aim is to limit the spread of infection, but Gruber said everyone involved is keenly aware of the risks.

"You're always weighing risks and benefits, sonaturally you are taking a risk just by leaving the house, by being in the hospital, by taking care of patients, but at the end of the day you have to consider what you are providing for that cost."

Mastoras saidno matter how well prepared the hospital may be for the inevitable arrival of critically ill patients, he's hopeful the assessment centre at Brewer Arena that opened Friday will help "deflect" at least some of the volume of patients from the ER.