In January and February of 2020, the Northeast Florida Healthcare Coalition (HCC) and Northeast Florida Local Emergency Planning Committee for Hazardous Materials (LEPC), programs of the Northeast Florida RC, partnered to implement a pilot training and exercise program. The goal of this program was to enhance shelter-in-place (SIP) capabilities of healthcare facilities for a hazardous materials incident. Healthcare agencies were asked to participate in a four step SIP training and exercise program. LEPC staff conducted SIP Train-the-Trainer courses and provided healthcare facilities training resources to implement SIP training at their healthcare facility. Once the internal SIP training was complete, the healthcare coalition initiated a community-wide SIP exercise. On February 25th, a notification was sent to the participating healthcare facilities for them to enact their SIP Plans. The following highlights the 4-step process.
1. PREPARE - Attended LEPC sponsored shelter-in-place training (offered in 7 counties).
2. IMPLEMENT TRAINING - Participants conducted a staff training at their healthcare facility on shelter-in-place concepts and developed a kit.
3. CONDUCT EXERCISE - Participants conducted a shelter-in-place exercise at their healthcare facility on February 25, 2020.