Emergency Preparedness

Andrew Moull
Specialist, Emergency and Disaster Management
Hamilton Health Sciences

Fraser Pennie
Senior Emergency Preparedness Specialist Emergency Preparedness
University Health Network

Health care facilities and healthcare delivery are increasing in complexity, just as climate-related and other hazards are increasing in frequency and severity. Together with higher public expectations and resultant regulation, the roles of healthcare emergency managers have broadened and become far more complex. At the same time, healthcare emergency management is not well understood by policymakers and healthcare senior executives, hampering the evolution of both the science and the profession.

Session Objectives:
• Briefly review the history of healthcare emergency management
• Present actionable ideas for advancing emergency management effectiveness and recognition as a health care management profession

Dr. Joseph Barbera
Associate Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering (Crisis & Emergency Management)
Associate Professor of Engineering Management and International Affairs
George Washington University

Over the past two decades, three novel coronaviruses have emerged: SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) in 2002, MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) in 2012 and now 2019-nCoV. A lot has changed since SARS in 2002: advances in technology have made a difference. Are Ontario’s emergency departments better prepared today and how do we make use of technologies available to us?

Session Objectives:
• Ontario’s experience with disease outbreaks
• The value of newer tools like eCTAS (an electronic triage application in use in Ontario) and evolving surveillance tools informed by AI
• Political factors in disease outbreak responses

Dr. Howard Ovens
Emergency Physician and Chief Medical Strategy Officer, Sinai Health System
Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto

Session Objectives:
• How we established a functional, regional governance framework
• How we approached surge mitigation for ambulatory, inpatient, and long term care
• Failing through the cracks: protecting the most vulnerable
• Looking to the future: Where are we heading? What do we keep after COVID19?

Dr. Andrew Willmore
Medical Director, Emergency Management
The Ottawa Hospital
Incident Commander in the Champlain Region Responding to COVID-19

This presentation will outline specific challenges to rural emergency preparedness with specific attention to the current Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic.  Dr. Moore will cover the topics of logistics, transport, advocacy and communication specifically from the rural and remote perspectives.

Session Objectives:
• Essential resources available to rural hospitals that are not well known
• Key differences in logistics from the rural perspective
• Strategies used to help with advocacy in rural and remote communities

Dr. Sean Moore
Emergency Physician from Kenora Ontario
Medical Director of Education, Ornge
Chief of Emergency Services, Lake of the Woods District Hospital

In this session, the speaker shares his lived experience of a mental health journey with acute stress disorder that began with responding to and helping disaster survivors recover from, three of Canada’s largest and costliest disasters. The presentation also outlines support strategies for first responders and other disaster and emergency management professionals, including the latest research from the Centre for Studies on Human Stress.

Session Objectives:
• Improve the attendees’ ability to identify elements that make work or life events stressful
• Show how support fits into busy schedules and discuss ways attendees can ‘pre-set’ their support for future events

Brad Ison
Owner and All Hazards Coach, Hazardscape Management Inc.
Former Director of Training, Accreditation, and Standards, Alberta Emergency Management Agency