Agenda

Ontario’s first-ever Provincial Emergency Management Strategy and Action Plan ensures that Ontarians are safe, practiced and prepared before, during and after emergencies. The plan sets a foundation for emergency management in Ontario.

The Provincial Emergency Management Strategy and Action Plan builds on lessons learned from past emergencies including the COVID-19 pandemic which was the single largest provincial emergency in decades.

Key Session Takeaways:

• The principles of the new plan, and how will they be measured
• What a one window to emergency management will look like under the new plan
• How the focus on analytics, proactive planning and real time monitoring will be key factors in the plan
• The role of training, education, and practice in ensuring all emergency services are prepared

Healthcare organizations are seeing more cyber attacks, many of which also include ransomware attacks.

The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) recently dealt with a major cybersecurity incident (Code Grey) that began at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, December 18.

It was a serious and difficult situation, particularly under the threat of ransomware, with staff working quickly to bring all impacted systems back online as quickly as possible by implementing back up procedures for systems.

Key Session Takeaways Include:

• How did Emergency Managers work with the IT teams and Executive Offices
• How did the response play out – and what would they do differently?
• How emergency preparedness organized and use Incident Management System principles during the event
• What responses were taken, when were they taken, and is there anything they would do differently?

With fewer resources and increasing demands, community hospitals have greater challenges in developing and executing on effective Emergency Preparedness operations. But there are ways to meet these challenges.

By partnering with other organizations, a dedicated training staff and using the same principles as a larger hospital, Oak Valley Health was able to prepare their staff for the future.

 Key Session Takeaways:

• The importance of stakeholder engagement
• The benefits of standardization by aligning the gap for understanding and showing value to differing portfolios
• Effective change management to overcome obstacles and opposing opinions stemming from various lived experiences
• Implementing and expanding knowledge to multiple layers of staff to generate awareness and sustainable education and training beyond the leadership group

When power systems fail, and they often do, the results can be catastrophic. If we see a cascading effect with generators going down, a longer-than-expected outage, patients are at high risk of dying.

This tabletop scenario will provide you with the opportunity to assess the best responses to a very real concern.

In small groups, you will work within teams to assess and respond to large scale total systems failure and provide your solutions to the other teams.

On September 27, 2022, Niagara Health received twenty-three patients from an industrial incident in St. Catharines.

Five patients were contaminated with hydrochloric acid and the remaining eighteen were considered to have been exposed.

Key Session Takeaways:

• Explore the coordination with pre-hospital providers
• The preparation of the ER by front-line hospital staff
• The EOC support activities and senior level team support
• Lessons learned including coordination between hospital sites and post discharge optics will be discussed

Healthcare organizations have increasingly been dealing with increased violence toward staff. Some of it physical, some verbal, and at times involving weapons– but all of it trauma inducing. Responding to violence within healthcare is a priority, but how best to respond?

This panel will discuss:

• Key principles and priorities regarding the spectrum of violence in escalating situations
• How Emergency Management supports staff in training, responding and recovering from violent situations in a trauma-informed approach
• The collaboration and ongoing partnership between the Emergency Management department and the Staff Support department after events to support staff and leaders, focusing on wellness and emotional well-being, while acknowledging opportunities for future improvements

Physicians are an integral part of the emergency response strategy, yet many do not take appropriate training to respond to a disaster. And emergency medicine training is not thorough enough to meet the unpredictable circumstances encountered during a larger-scale emergency.

During this session, we will hear from a physician on the front lines, who was deployed overseas as part of an emergency medical team response to Ukraine, to gather some much-needed insights into how to improve our training going forward.

Key Session takeaways:

• Lessons learned that apply to the domestic context
• Why disaster medicine should include disaster management principals, including command structures
• How to overcome siloed off entities and build more effective training programs

For the past few years, emergency preparedness staff have been working with the redevelopment team to prepare for the move over to a new tower. This has necessitated dedicated time to training staff from a variety of teams, from front line staff to administration staff.

 As the move to the new facility comes closer, hear how the project was envisioned and executed.

 Key Session Takeaways:

• How the communication channels between the redevelopment team and EP staff evolved and continues to develop
• How EP training and testing was executed in the new space to ensure success in practice
• Lessons learned in downtime and redevelopment planning, systems testing and procedures, and in downtime standardization

Mass casualties resulting from Hazardous Materials are a real threat, as we have recently learned from the Ohio train derailment. Of course, there are other threats, such as bad actors, nuclear leaks, factory explosions, and a many other possibilities.

Responding and preparing for a HazMat incident is more complicated and staff intensive than many events we deal with daily. What do we know about responding to such emergencies, and especially major events that can overwhelm hospitals?

Key Session takeaways:

• The differences between perfect world and real-world scenarios and why your operations plan needs to prepare you for chaos
• How to manage patient flow through optimized decontamination zones, quarantine and access protocols
• What special considerations do nuclear incidents require
• How should you build on your planning and training to ensure a successful response