Disaster Day

Disaster Day

By: Tori Chambers, Texas A&M University 

Each year, Texas A&M University hosts the nation’s largest student-led interprofessional emergency response simulation, known as Disaster Day. This event allows students from the colleges of Veterinary Medicine, Pharmacy, Public Health, Nursing, and Medicine to collaborate with the Corps of Cadets and the Texas State Guard to practice emergency response on a grand scale.

Each year, there is a unique catastrophe presented for students to manage. Last year’s simulation was an earthquake that resulted building collapses and a train derailment; the year before was a research plant explosion that devastated the entire neighborhood. With actors covered in makeup and bandages as well as first responders, hard-hats, and mock animal cases, this disaster teaches students the appropriate response skills needed for such situations and allows them to learn the interprofessional channels of communication required when an entire community is affected by crisis.

The TAMU Veterinary Emergency Team provides some of their actual medical response units for day. These trucks are outfitted with medical equipment and supplies needed for stabilizing and treating animals in the field during a crisis. During Disaster Day, we had to triage animal cases according to the severity of their wounds or diseases and then chose treatment plans according to what supplies we had on hand. Sometimes these animals had diseases that were transmissible to humans, requiring us to collaborate the human medical doctors and public health officials on the proper containment protocols as well as owner education or care.

As animal experts in our community, we are often the best educated, most capable individuals to put a plan into action about animal welfare and preventing the spread of disease. I think it’s invaluable for veterinarians to receive training in emergency response and become better prepared to take leadership roles when the unexpected happens.