Hospital-based special needs patient decontamination: lessons from the shower.

Objectives: A hospital-based decontamination team tested whether it could (1) perform effective technical decontamination while maintaining safety of staff and patients; (2) safely accommodate unique needs in the showers, including guide dogs and motorized wheelchairs; (3) identify needs of special needs populations by patient type, including blindness, hearing loss, and cognitive learning disabilities; (4) outline effective use of federal preparedness funds to support planning and execution of tabletop and mock victim drills; and (5) demonstrate the ability of a community hospital to act as a catalyst for community-wide disaster response improvements.

Design: A series of five disaster exercises were used to test hypotheses and to generate quality improvement results.

Setting: Fixed emergency department decontamination facilities.

Patients/participants: A total of 39 hospital-based decontamination team members, 40 other drill staff and 35 mock victims were included.

Main Outcome Measures: Three priority decontamination operations changes resulted from each of the five completed drills.

Results: Formulated prioritized list of decontamination team procedural changes to improve patient safety and technical decontamination and to generate a table of best practices to share.

Conclusions: With enhanced training, disaster drills participation of community response agencies and special needs patients, community hospitals can improve safety while accommodating unique patient needs.