Preparing Physician Assistant/Physician Associate Students for the Unthinkable: Implementing Mass Casualty Incident Training

INTRODUCTION: Mass casualty incidents (MCIs) are community threats prompting recommendations for formal MCI training among health care professionals, including physician assistant/associate (PA) students. In response, two accredited PA graduate programs collaborated on an immersive MCI training day aimed at improving student preparedness and confidence in responding to an MCI in the community. METHODS: In this prospective cohort study, didactic-year PA students (n = 45) participated in a novel MCI curriculum that involved practical skills stations and large-scale simulations. Preliminary data on program effectiveness were assessed pretraining and post-training via surveys assessing knowledge and self-reported preparedness and confidence in responding to an MCI. Paired samples t-tests were used to determine if differences were seen between pre and post assessments. RESULTS: We describe the development and implementation of MCI training in detail, including curricular design, personnel, set-up, and administration. Initial analyses showed statistically significant improvements in knowledge gained (42.4 ± 14 vs. 86 ± 12, P ≤ .0001), perceived preparedness (1.8 ± 0.8 vs. 4.3 ± 0.5, P ≤ .0001), and perceived confidence (2.9 ± 1.3 vs. 4.3 ± 0.6, P ≤ .0001) after implementation of the MCI curriculum. CONCLUSIONS: The development and execution of an MCI curriculum is described and can be used as a template for PA educators wishing to incorporate this training into the curriculum. Training significantly enhanced PA students' knowledge, preparedness, and confidence in community-based disaster response. These findings support the integration of formal MCI training in PA education to prepare future providers for real-world disaster response.