Hospitals must be prepared to respond to public health emergencies that may create a sudden demand on services. Disaster drills allow hospitals to test response capabilities to these emergencies in real time.
AHRQ has developed this Tool for Evaluating Core Elements of Hospital Drills. This tool can be used by hospitals to identify the most important strengths and weaknesses in disaster drills. The results can be applied to training and drill planning.
Operations-based Exercises validate plans, policies, agreements and procedures, clarify roles and responsibilities, and identify resource gaps in an operational environment.Operations-based exercises include the following:
Full-Scale Exercises (FSE): A full-scale exercise is a multi-agency, multi-jurisdictional, multi-discipline exercise involving functional (e.g., joint field office, emergency operation centers, etc.) and “boots on the ground” response (e.g., firefighters decontaminating mock victims).
Drill: A drill is a coordinated, supervised activity usually employed to test a single, specific operation or function within a single entity (e.g., a fire department conducts a decontamination drill).
Functional Exercise (FE): A functional exercise examines and/or validates the coordination, command, and control between various multi-agency coordination centers (e.g., emergency operation center, joint field office, etc.). A functional exercise does not involve any “boots on the ground” (i.e., first responders or emergency officials responding to an incident in real time).