Education and Training

Abstract

Accurate management and performance in the medical response to major incidents requires specific knowledge and skills in addition to those needed for routine medical care: the ability to perform triage even when the need of medical care extensively exceeds available resources; to primarily treat emergencies outside our own specialty; to use simplified methods for diagnosis and treatment; to handle reserve systems as backup for vulnerable technically advanced systems; and, finally, to work as an integrated part in the organization needed for response to major incidents, which requires knowledge about that organization. All this requires education and training, which may be the most important component of the preparedness for major incidents. To make plans is of limited value if the staff involved does not know how to work to them or is unaware of the methodological principles for performance during a major incident. Education must be done on all levels: undergraduate, specialist and postgraduate.

Training medical personnel in major incident response is a challenge and requires good educational models. The best way of learning is “learning by doing,” and because we cannot train this with a “real” situation, we need good and realistic simulation models through which decision making and performance on all levels in the chain of management can be trained interactively.