This essay examines the need for communities to develop systematic training programs that include full-scale emergency exercise evaluation. It argues that large-scale exercises are essential for EMS professionals, as real-life emergencies require coordinated, multi-level responses that small-scale training cannot replicate. Drawing on research by Lichterman (2000) and Verni (2012), the paper discusses the importance of pre-tested emergency plans, appropriate delegation to the smallest community level, and the inclusion of all key stakeholders. The essay concludes that a fundamentally sound and compassionate training framework aligns with broader community emergency management strategies and contributes to community resilience and health.
The current landscape of threats facing communities throughout the free world places a heavy burden on those responsible for managing emergency responses. The purpose of this essay is to describe the need for communities to develop a systematic method of training that includes full-scale exercise evaluation. This essay also addresses the notion that these types of large-scale events are essential in fulfilling the training requirements of EMS professionals. To help support these arguments, a brief discussion of community stakeholders in such exercises and the importance of their roles within the training is provided.
A real-life situation can never be fully replicated at the training level. There is always some form of restriction on events that separates the exercise from feeling truly real or intense. EMS workers have, in the course of their normal duties, experienced many real and traumatic events on a micro level, and the EMT thrives in this type of small-scale situation. A problem arises, however, when these life-saving efforts need to be accurately synchronized with larger and more wide-scale emergency responses. Small-scale experience alone is insufficient preparation for the coordination demands of a major disaster.
It is essential that a plan of some sort be known at all levels of response. Verni (2012) suggested that research on natural disaster responses requires a plan at a collective level. She wrote, "the most important takeaway lesson from Hurricane Irene is that the best preparation for a successful emergency evacuation is to have a functional plan in place ahead of time, one that has been both tested and refined until emergency management experts are confident of its viability" (p. 1820).
The inclusion of all important players in this training effort reflects a holistic and balanced approach to problem-solving that demonstrates wise and reasonable leadership. Forethought for such macro-level efforts requires a basic understanding of who and what is at stake in the event of a large-scale emergency or disaster. One of the more challenging tasks associated with leadership and emergency management is accounting for human lives and human resources. In an ideal world, everyone and everything would hold equal value, but at the governmental level of planning, certain rank ordering must be done in order to preserve the functioning of government itself and to protect the governed at all costs.
"Self-reliance, delegation, and community health through preparedness"
Practice is important, and the need for the entire community to come together in a large-scale manner will help and assist in many ways if a future disaster is to strike. Keeping a fundamentally solid framework of important tasks and goals will also keep these types of exercises aligned with the larger community emergency management strategies that are associated with these types of issues and solutions.
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