KINGSTON, R.I. — May 3, 2006 — As a member of the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance Team deployed to Louisiana to assist in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Jeffrey Bratberg<\/a> knows what works and what doesn\u2019t. Scenario is Category 5 hurricane in Rhode Island KINGSTON, R.I. — May 3, 2006 — As a member of the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance Team deployed to Louisiana to assist in the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, Jeffrey Bratberg knows what works and what doesn\u2019t. Now the assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":639,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[35,50,53,131],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-news-pharmd","category-news-php","category-news-teaching"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNow the assistant professor of pharmacy at the University of Rhode Island wants to see how students in his advanced infectious and pulmonary diseases class would perform in the simulated aftermath of a Category 5 hurricane that strikes Rhode Island.
\nOn Friday, May 12, Bratberg\u2019s students will participate in a mock disaster clinic run by Bratberg and the Rhode Island Disaster Medical Assistance Team for their final exam. From 3 to 6 p.m., the last day of finals, members of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team, several of whom were in the Gulf of Mexico after Katrina, will erect a tent outside Mackal Field House as a field clinic for the exercise.
\n\u201cThe students are working in groups to develop lists of drugs they would provide at a disaster site. Then, they will be tested on whether they made logical choices and how they respond to diseases for which they have no medicines,\u201d Bratberg said.
\nThe groups will exchange drug lists when the exercise starts so they will be working with lists that are unfamiliar to them.
\n\u201cThis will simulate what happens in a disaster response,\u201d Bratberg said. \u201cWhen we worked in New Orleans, the drug caches didn\u2019t have all the medicines we needed, so we had to make appropriate decisions or order medications that we didn\u2019t have.\u201d
\nThe students will face a variety of scenarios to test their preparation, ability to adapt in a crisis and act quickly to speed drug delivery and perform patient-centered care.
\n\u201cThey will learn about the limits faced by pharmacists and other health care professionals,\u201d Bratberg said. \u201cWe want them to be prepared to work at plane crashes, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other disasters.\u201d
\nHe said emergency department data indicates that the number one presenting symptom is pain. \u201cSo we will see whether students requested adequate amounts of pain medication,\u201d Bratberg said.
\nHe said one of the critical goals in New Orleans was to make sure patients with chronic illnesses received medications to prevent hospitalization.
\nMembers of the disaster team will serve as patients who will make rapid requests to each group of students, who then must make appropriate clinical decisions, therapeutic substitutions, and decisions related to logistics, command and security.
\n\u201cMy goal is to make the test of the cache list as a real as possible, with people who actually have made these requests to pharmacists like me in a disaster,\u201d Bratberg said.
\nNOTE TO EDITORS: The clinic is open to print and broadcast reporters. To make coverage arrangements, call Dave Lavallee, URI Department of Communications, at 874-2116.
\nMedia Contact: Dave Lavallee<\/a>, 401-874-5862<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"