Students Experience Mass Casualty Nursing From the Patient Perspective in a Simulated Mass Casualty Exercise.

ABSTRACT:Life-saving response to mass casualty incidents (MCIs) requires education and training. Participation in an MCI full-scale exercise provided nursing students with a rare opportunity to experience a simulated disaster from the patient perspective to better understand the unique issues involved in mass casualty response. This innovative teaching approach enabled students to undergo triage and decontamination as victims of a chemical MCI and participate in a research study. We describe student feedback on this learning experience and the implications of incorporating a full-scale MCI for providing a patient perspective into nursing curricula.