Allegheny General Hospital and AHN conduct wide-ranging, in-depth mock river rescue
Allegheny Health Network put its emergency trauma center network to the test Thursday with a first-of-its-kind mock river rescue exercise for the network at Allegheny General Hospital.
The large-scale drill simulated a boating accident involving an intoxicated boat operator, sending 30 mock patients to AGH's trauma center within an hour. Hospital leaders say the goal was to push the system to its limits and identify any weaknesses in emergency response procedures.
"We're going to get all 30 patients within an hour up our ramp," said Dr. Mara Aloi, vice chair of education for Allegheny Health Network.
Actors portraying patients arrived with realistic makeup and prosthetics designed to mimic blunt-force trauma, propeller injuries, burns and other emergency conditions. Participants followed detailed scripts to create a scenario as close to a real mass-casualty event as possible.
Carly Jacobs, one of the volunteer actors, said the exercise gave her confidence in the hospital's preparedness.
"Everything in the news, you're always afraid it might happen. Just knowing AHN does these drills and is prepared to handle anything that goes wrong makes me confident as someone who goes to AHN," Jacobs said.
The exercise involved teams across multiple departments, including emergency medicine, nursing and anesthesia. AGH has conducted similar drills over the past year focused on mass shootings and hazardous materials incidents.
According to Dr. Aloi, one of the most common areas for improvement identified during emergency exercises is communication.
"It's always communication," Aloi said. "I'm guilty of it. I'm always on the radio and make a lot of chatter. Trying to streamline communications so that it's less noise on the radio to get things done."
The river rescue simulation also marked the first time AGH incorporated an artificial intelligence tool designed to document a patient's care journey throughout the hospital.
"To help record from point A to point B what happened to the patient so we get a really good transcript," Aloi said. "So it's the medical care but also the reimbursement down the line."
Hospital officials say the AI documentation system remains a work in progress, but information gathered during the drill will be shared with a national working group and featured in a future presentation. The long-term goal is to improve medical documentation and patient care tracking.
