Enhancing Nursing Students’ Disaster Response Knowledge and Skill Attainment in a Complex Interprofessional Mass Casualty Exercise

Summary: Preparing nursing students for disaster response is increasingly important due to the rising frequency and severity of disasters. Mass casualty exercises expose nursing students to realistic emergency response situations. This presentation describes a complex interprofessional exercise where nursing students practiced disaster response skills during a simulated airplane crash. The Triennial Airport Disaster Exercise (TADE) was held on October 20, 2023, in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, and involved multiple federal, state, and local emergency response agencies. Nursing faculty and students from 3 universities participated as emergency responders during the event. To prepare students, the faculty provided them with comprehensive training on disaster management, incident command system, disaster triage, and first aid. Students were placed in various incident roles, including triage team members, field hospital care team members, and disaster management task force leaders. Each role required interprofessional communication and critical thinking skills. A post-exercise survey was conducted to evaluate the TADE as a learning experience, focusing on how the exercise influenced students’ knowledge/skill attainment and interest in additional disaster response training. Evaluation data showed that the TADE enhanced students’ understanding of nurses’ roles in disaster response and the importance of interprofessional practice. Students were satisfied with their personal performance and the overall exercise. Open-ended feedback described the importance of working in teams to adapt to a chaotic, realistic situation. Areas of improvement included communication and exercise organization. Few opportunities exist for nursing students to gain exposure to disaster response situations where relevant skills can be practiced. The TADE is an excellent example of an innovative learning experience that offered nursing students invaluable interprofessional disaster response experience and stimulated interest in further disaster response training. By partnering with local response agencies, nursing faculty can develop unique, realistic learning environments for students to practice effective care that can be applied in future disasters.