Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
FAU medical students prep for coronavirus outbreak with drill
A crowd of people wearing face masks stepped off a bus in Coconut Creek, screaming and panicked about having been infected with the new coronavirus after spending time on a cruise ship. “Help me,” shouted a young woman, coughing and trying to catch her breath.
“Doctors” quickly donned their protective gear and ran toward the crowd, eyeballing each person to determine their level of sickness.
Medical students from Florida Atlantic University took part in a hands-on disaster drill Tuesday to learn how to respond to a surge of coronavirus patients.
The students, some of whom already work as resident physicians in hospital emergency rooms, were thrown into a dock setting to respond to a scenario with mock cruise ship passengers who were exposed to coronavirus. The patients, played by actors, flooded into a Coconut Creek warehouse to be treated.
“This reinforced that we need to protect ourselves first, then assess the individuals for symptoms and how sick they are, and decide whether to put them in isolation,” said Daniel Parks, a third-year emergency medicine physician resident at FAU’s Schmidt College of Medicine who will graduate in June.
One of the mock patients, Sy Finkelstein, 87, coughed and foamed at the mouth while a student assessed his symptoms and decided whether to isolate him.
The students organized the patients into three groups based on their level of sickness: RED for lifethreatening and immediate medical needs, YELLOW for less severe symptoms, then GREEN for mild symptoms. Finkelstein was put in the yellow area.
Parks said hands-on is the best training in how to triage each patient quickly for the new coronavirus and work as a team to determine who is sickest. “We think the level and number of cases will increase in time. It’s important to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.”
“Preparation is key,” said Patrick Hughes, FAU Emergency simulation director who conducted the training. “This exercise brought awareness to some of the challenges they may face,”
The simulated challenges included putting on protective gear quickly, knowing when to isolate an infected person, and communicating with other emergency workers wearing HAZMAT suits that cover the face.
Participant Alexander Busko works as an emergency resident at Delray Medical Center in Delray Beach, Bethesda Hospital East in Boynton Beach and St. Mary’s Hospital in West Palm Beach. “I have already had two patients come in scared they had the virus. We were able to rule it out based on travel history,” he said. “As more cases are confirmed in the U.S. it’s going to become incredibly common for people to come in to be ruled out.”
Busko said an emergency physician’s most difficult task will be differentiating potential COVID-19 patients from the thousands who have run-of-the-mill flu or another virus. “In somebody who is febrile, has the right symptoms, has possibly had contact with cases, we can’t send those people home. We have to put them in isolation,” Busko said.
“These are things we are not used to and that’s the reason we simulate,” Busko said. “It’s better to be overwhelmed and confused in a controlled environment.”
Benjamin Mazer trains as a physician resident in the same Palm Beach County emergency rooms as Busco. Mazer said the training for a contagion scenario didn’t take into consideration a potential challenge — having enough protective equipment for all healthcare workers should the area have a surge of cases. “Because we have a large elderly population, if anything is going to hit, it will hit us very hard,” Mazer said. “I think we are going to have a large burden if this area does have an outbreak.”
Nurses and paramedics also took part in FAU’s simulation to help teach the residents how to triage and treat the potential coronavirus patients. When the simulation was over, Hughes debriefed the students to discuss what they learned, what went well and what needed improvement. “It’s important to make sure if these protocols do have to be executed, it will be as seamless as possible,” he said.