Background

An important aspect of disaster medicine is to be proactive and respond quickly when disaster strikes. In Sweden, the role responsible for swift medical response on the regional level is the designated duty officer.

Methods

A large exercise to assess national medical response ability was conducted. Seven medical regional staffs (a total of 93 individuals participated as tested participants) were involved in handling a large train accident scenario. The exercise was run for 5 hours, where the different regional staffs were located at their regular command posts. The exercise was organized using Emergo Train Systems.

Results

Several capabilities were identified during the exercise as important for the organization to maintain the ability to handle a similar event: documentation and operational picture, communication and terminology, command of resources, strategy for distribution of resources, national co-ordination, and exercise development.

The designated duty officers were central to the exercise in several aspects: 1) in developing and verifying a realistic scenario and preparing background information, 2) as participants in the exercise, 3) assessors of the staffs’ behaviors, and 4) as domain experts when interpreting the exercise outcome.

Conclusions

Using subject matter experts is central to many research domains. However, the more complex a situation is the larger the demand of expertise is. The technical platform allows for coordinating complex exercises, whereas the subject matter expert in terms of the designated duty officer is required to guarantee validity and reliability in these large-scale exercises.

Key messages:

• Running complex scenarios to train and test abilities requires subject matter experts in both planning, preparation, implementation, and assessment.

• Sophisticated simulator and training platforms, such as Emergo Train Systems, facilitates while the designated duty officers are necessary to guarantee validity and reliability in the exercise.