September marked the beginning of National Preparedness Month (NPM), a month dedicated to training civilians to be prepared for managing various emergencies.
NPM was launched by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 2004 and was conceived as a result of an executive order under the Carter administration.
In honor of this month, the Medical Center held structured workshops to help people prepare for and respond to disasters.
The four weeks of September were organized into four separate modules, with subjects including fire safety, power loss, medical emergency response, and MedSled training for patient evacuations.
Activities consisted of, but were not limited to, in-person tutorials, virtual meetings, and online curriculum on sites such as MyPath.
Rob Marshall, the director of sales at Ethos Preparedness, has led MedSled training workshops for multiple years at URMC. He noted that these classes have served as an opportunity for anyone to get better equipped to handle emergency situations.
“There have been scenarios where there’s been evacuations at University medical centers where they have asked the [medical] students to help out,” he said. “The idea is to get as many people as possible comfortable with this equipment … for the best possible outcome no matter what scenario you’re dealing with.”
The URMC plans to continue hosting and advertising learning opportunities for those interested in emergency relief and crisis management, with special emphasis in future Septembers.
“[Students should] go out and look for the resource materials to help support their learnings,” Marshall said. “The emergency management team here has training throughout the year, so if [students] would just let them know they want to participate … I’m sure they would be able to get that information and be able to sign up for classes if they chose to.”
