CGH
Participates in
Exercise NorthStar
Sunday, 8 Jan 06 saw the largest Civil Emergency exercise
ever conducted in Singapore. The exercise depicted the
scenario where 4 MRT stations and 1 bus interchange were
bombed consecutively within a short span of time. In addition,
a sarin attack was simulated at one of the MRT stations. This
exercise was conducted to test out the integrated response of
emergency and transport agencies.
CGH deployed 62 staff from various departments to support the
national exercise. 2 Medical field teams were sent to triage and
evacuate the casualties from Marina Bay MRT station. A total of
13 casualties were conveyed to CGH during the exercise.
Triage teams comprising doctors, nurses and stretcher bearers
were in charge of re-triaging and stabilising the casualties conveyed from incident sites. A decontamination team comprising 21 staff
were assigned to shower P1 casualties who were on trolleys. Other
teams included operations centre, registration, robing, Chemical
Agent Monitoring, Maintenance and Traffic teams.
To add realism into the exercise, staff were made to adorn
protective suits when working with the casualties. The
decontamination team also had to cut the clothing of casualties
for showering.
"For
the past 2 years, we had been training support staff from
radiology, physiotherapy, pharmacy, MRO, Laboratory, Finance,
HR etc to do decontamination of patients in contact of hazardous
materials (HAZMAT). With our new decontamination
station, it was a good opportunity to put the whole
thing together to test the workflow for
decontaminating injured and
uninjured exposed
patients,” said Dr Goh Siang Hiong, Senior Consultant
and Chief of A&E Department."
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