Montana VA practices decontamination exercise

On Thursday, the Montana VA ran through a decontamination exercise to simulate a situation in which patients showed up to the VA with contaminants on their person.

“So, I think it’s incredibly important, when you're talking about the potential of contamination, is that our staff are experts, our frontline staff are experts, on their jobs, in their roles, in their responsibilities,” says Associate Medical Center Director, Kimberly Adkins.

After two days of module training, the VA Montana’s Emergency Management team went through a dry run of a decontamination exercise before the official practice on Thursday morning.

The exercise preps the team for potential contamination emergencies. For example, in Thursday’s practice, the team went through protocol to address 3 patients who showed up with gasoline on their person. Other contaminants could include bleach, diesel fuel, pesticides, and more. These team members, known as First Receivers, are volunteers and are from various departments such as housekeeping and administrative services.

“The First Receivers are set here. The people that need the treatment and care and decontamination will present here at our emergency department and then we will activate and assemble our Decon. team to go out to that individual or individuals for decontamination,” says Hospital Emergency Manager, Paul Reyes.

These exercises are necessary to protect all patients and employees at the VA from further contamination. Furthermore, ensuring contamination containment creates the smallest impact on the hospital itself, allowing for the continuation of care for other patients.

“This operation or this training is designed to have low to minimal impact on facility operations, to take care of any situation, to quickly respond to and to mitigate, and to do the recovery portion as quickly and as smoothly as possible,” says Reyes.