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

When seconds can save lives, fast, clear and effective communications are vital. Mass notification systems alert all staff immediately, allow for two-way communication, which enables you to keep your entire organization up to date during emergencies.

Unfortunately, not all organizations have one, but the advantages are numerous. Learn how others have been deploying mass notifications systems to the benefits of their organizations.

Key Session Takeaways:

• Understand how the system has improved response times, led to faster resolution of critical incidents
• How healthcare organizations are integrating their systems to automate notifications
• How a mass notification system change the incident command centre for the better

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

Globally we can expect more extreme weather events, including record heat, cold, and more destructive storms. This will not only be a threat to the operation of a hospital, but it can also lead to more patients arriving in emergency rooms.

Alongside this, we are seeing the likelihood of more tropical diseases arriving in Canada, with some catastrophic implications.

With all these challenges on the horizon, how are hospitals adapting and responding to the threat of climate change?

Key Session Takeaways:

• The risk are we seeing now, and in the future, for Canada
• How a changing climate can impact our ability to provide health care and how should hospitals respond

After a crisis, whether a natural disaster, network attack, or terrorist attack, healthcare organizations need to be back and running as quickly and as safely as possible.

Any business continuity plan should have a disaster recovery plan as well to keep operations running, and ready to return to normal operations as soon as possible. Building out a continuity plan takes specialized insights, and thoughtful consideration for all hazards.

Key Session Takeaways:

• How to incorporate your disaster recovery plan with your business continuity plan
• The steps involved in pre-planning your business continuity plan, and developing a viable disaster recovery plan
• Successful incidents we have seen across industries and what can we apply to healthcare

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 back-office staff. I recommend using the word “administration” staff instead of “back office”.

 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

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

Drawing on his experiences from being on patrol in the wadi’s and deserts of Afghanistan, to working in the corporate world, Phil Jewel will share the lessons he has learned along the way: ones that had been introduced to him during his training and became embodied during some of the most intense challenges a leader can face.

In this inspirational talk, Phil will show how his 3-2-1 principles can be, and should be, universally applied. This follows his motto: that leadership is leadership is leadership, and it starts with oneself.

Key Session Takeaways:

• Three universal leadership principles we should all hold dearly
• Two practical questions we should ask ourselves as daily
• One thought we should always ponder

Moral Injury (MI) is a type of psychological stress response, which may include feelings of guilt, shame, anger, betrayal, and/or the loss of self that may arise from exposure to potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs.) PMIEs may be the result of an action the person perpetrates, fails to prevent, or witnesses. If left unaddressed, these events can lead to MI.

While studies of MI began with military personnel and Veterans, researchers and mental health professionals are now highlighting that public safety personnel (PSP), including police, paramedics, and emergency response professionals, likely also experience MI. PSP may experience MI due to regular exposure to distressing situations in which they may not be able to uphold their values, prevent harm, or keep people safe.

These difficulties may intensify in the COVID-19 context given the unprecedented size and scope of the pandemic and the on-the-ground challenges it continues to pose.

Key Session Takeaways:

• Understand what moral injury is and how it differs from other responses to stress and trauma
• Learn some examples of potentially morally injurious events (PMIEs) reported in research on MI in public safety settings
• Learn about new research in this area and what it reveals about MI in PSP
• Learn about the mental health outcomes associated with MI and practical techniques to address the potential mental health impacts of PMIEs and to prevent moral injury, whether you’re on the frontline or in a leadership role.

Hospitals must manage a great deal of connected devices, from support devices such as building automation, and facility security devices, to diagnostic machines and patient monitoring devices. The hospital of today is much different from even just 5 years ago. And so too are the risks.

In the wake of numerous attacks on hospitals, there has been a push to understand the risks posed by smart devices. While IoT devices have revolutionized the way the world operates, including how healthcare delivers and manages care, they are often seen as easy conduits for cyber-attacks.

Key Session Takeaways:

• Insight into how cyber risk and attacks on hospitals have evolved over time and how IoMT devices have played a role in these attacks
• Real-life examples of how attacks, breaches, and vulnerabilities target these devices
• Acquire best practices security and risk management teams should deploy mitigate the true risk of their environments.

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

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