Objective: Few established curricula are available for teaching disaster medicine. We describe a comprehensive, multi-modality approach focused on simulation to teach disaster medicine to emergency medicine residents in a 3-year curriculum.
Methods: Residents underwent a 3-year disaster medicine curriculum incorporating a variety of venues, personnel, and roles. The curriculum included classroom lectures, tabletop exercises, virtual reality simulation, high-fidelity simulation, hospital disaster drills, and journal club discussion. All aspects were supervised by specialty emergency medicine faculty and followed a structured debriefing. Residents rated the high-fidelity simulations by using a 10-point Likert scale.
Results: Three classes of emergency medicine residents participated in the 3-year training program. Residents found the exercise to be realistic, educational, and relevant to their practice. After participating in the program, residents felt better prepared for future disasters.
Conclusions: Given the large scope of impact that disasters potentiate, it is understandably difficult to teach these skills effectively. Training programs can utilize this simulation-based curriculum to better prepare the nation's emergency medicine physicians for future disasters. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2016;10:611-614).
Keywords: curriculum; disaster medicine; emergency medicine; residency training; simulation; virtual reality.