CONCORD, NH — If you hear strange sounds or see unusual activity at the Concord Hospital campus on Wednesday, everything is OK … it is only a drill.
Concord Hospital Health System and the New Hampshire Department of Homeland Security will conduct an “armed intruder” drill at the hospital. This is the third such drill happening with the hospital’s affiliates. Drills were also held in Franklin and Laconia earlier this year.
John Duval, the hospital’s director of security, said safety and training have been consistent priorities for security staff. However, security staffers, who also worked with hospital staff to ensure they were prepared, had not done extensive training since the end of the pandemic. Duval has also been named to a new state commission focused on hospital safety.
A few events nationally led the team to “revisit our policy” and shift the focus from active shooter to armed intruder.
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“There have been situations, not only in the United States but across the world, where the killing of people in one incident happens in other ways other than firearms,” he said.
Duval said security and medical staff needed to be focused on the person and the weapon, not just a gun. The security staff then rewrote many of the protocols over the course of about two years. During all of last year, employees at all three hospitals were trained with the new policies.
Eric Crane, a security program manager at the hospital, said employees worked on functional exercises, testing their eternal response to an event. Every department and employee was involved in hundreds of activities. The events and exercises were “short in duration” but meant to get employees to focus on what was happening at the hospital before outside personnel arrived to assist.
“Our policy speaks to avoid, hide, and fight,” he said.
Previously, the policy was run, hide, and fight, but that often led to hundreds of employees all converging on exits, causing clusters of activity and chaos. By avoiding, employees create distance, and in many ways, Duval said, they are safer, too.
Crane said he would act as an armed intruder and then instruct the staff to react to the scenario chosen for the training so the drill would be as realistic as possible. Hospital staff, he said, performed the tasks before work, during breaks and lunch hours, and after regular work hours, so their day-to-day activities focused on patient care were not affected by the training.
Security officials conducted debriefings after the training to analyze each department’s successes. Crane said each employee reacted differently to each scenario; some found their heart rates rising, while others had to address the emotionality of the training.
“The reactions have been quite positive,” Crane said.
Duval said each department now had safety and escape plans based on the training. And every employee, too, has their plans, he said.
“We want them to keep this, not on the front burner,” he said. “Awareness. Don’t come to work afraid; come to work aware. And when you do that, you can do your job, reasonably safe, and the employee will be successful when they are mindful of their options.”
After all the training, Duval and Crane raised the level beyond the hospitals to include outside law enforcement, fire and rescue teams, and other entities involved with emergency rooms. When there is conflict in a hospital, Duval said, it was often in an emergency department, even though it could happen anywhere in the building. But it was usually focused on a specific crisis incident.
While law enforcement and firefighters will be involved, the focus will not be on their activities and reactions as much as on the reactions of the hospital staff and security.
Franklin was held in May, and Laconia in August. After Wednesday’s work, the security officials will assess how everything went and then proceed.
Duval and Crane said the hospitals had excellent working relationships with law enforcement partners around the county and were fortunate to have built rapport with the departments.
The drill will start at Concord Hospital around 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 25.
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