Annual Missouri Hope exercise helps students, emergency personnel develop skills through ‘trial and error’

Annual Missouri Hope exercise helps students, emergency personnel develop skills through 'trial and error'

Skies were clear and the sun was bright at the Mozingo Outdoor Education Recreation Area (MOERA). Still, the temperament was less pleasant Friday, Saturday and Sunday as Northwest Missouri State University hosted its 12th annual Missouri Hope emergency response field training exercise.

"It was exactly as hard as I thought it would be," Peter Wheeler, a University of Missouri-Kansas City nursing student, said as he caught his breath after the first iteration of the exercise on Friday afternoon. "It was just really hard."

The premise of the annual simulation is that a tornado struck the fictional town of Redden Village, and it's up to the cadre of volunteers, first responders and advanced medical teams to search the damaged area and care for victims. Participants in the training exercise rotate through scenarios and response team roles that help them practice search-and-rescue, assessment of traumatic injuries and evacuations from difficult terrains, such as cliffs and rivers.

This year's exercise attracted about 35 participants with basic skills in emergency and disaster management (EDM) and nearly 20 more who were classified as advanced participants with experience in emergency and medical operations. In addition to Northwest - where participation in Missouri Hope is required for EDM majors - student participants came from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Northern Oklahoma College as well as a pair of New York schools, the University at Albany and Paul Smith's College.

Additionally, about 50 staff members and EDM experts representing 15 partner agencies provided support to participants and worked behind the scenes. Dozens of volunteer role players - who this year included a large number of students from Frontier STEM High School in Kansas City - were dressed with moulage to mimic real injuries and portray disaster victims.

Any sense of comfort for the participants comes from the sense that Missouri Hope is a learning environment and a place where failure is acceptable.

"You want to fail when it's make-believe, when it's not real lives on the line, and you can learn from those failures," Travis Surprise, a Northwest instructor of emergency and disaster management, said. "What I really like about it is the subject experts know that. They've lived that whole portion and can say, 'Hey, I failed this before. Let me put those little shared experiences on these students so they understand what it's like.'"

On Friday afternoon, a response team assembled near Redden Village and discussed their assignments before being dispatched to the epicenter of the disaster. The team then hiked into the village where they immediately confronted a field with overturned shipping containers and buses, piles of concrete and scattered debris. Bodies were scattered across the landscape as victims screamed and yelled for help. Some of them spoke only in Spanish.

"If you can walk to the sound of voice, do it now!" response team members shouted. One by one, the team members approached victims to gather information and assess their wounds. To help the medical teams coming behind them, the response team tied colored bands around victims' arms to characterize their injuries. Victims with the ability to walk were tagged with green armbands; yellow meant serious but survivable injuries; red was used for critically injured victims, and a black armband indicated the person was deceased.

While response team members assessed a woman whose arm was crushed under a pile of concrete, an advanced medical team tended to a woman whose lower half was crushed under a fallen roof.

The iterations are chaotic and intense, with each lasting a couple of hours. A break after each iteration allows teams to evaluate their response and then reassess and reassemble to go at it another time with team members trading roles.

"The first time you do anything, you're bad at it, right?" Wheeler said. "It's just like riding a bike that first time. You need some help. You need some training wheels, and this is definitely a trial-by-fire situation."

Closer to the shore of Mozingo Lake, Elijah Dix, a freshman EDM major at Northwest, and Makayla Mead, a senior nursing student at UMKC, completed a water-based search and rescue scenario involving a group of campers who were caught in the storm and sustained head and leg injuries.

Mead, who is working toward becoming a neonatal intensive care nurse, opted to participate in Missouri Hope to build her skills in situations outside of the traditional hospital environment. She said she was trying to be more assertive in her roles at Missouri Hope.

"We didn't really know what to do," Mead said. "But we learned from it. We learned to look everywhere. It's as real as it can be."

Similarly, Dix, who wants to become a firefighter, said he was gaining confidence in his abilities as the exercise continued, and he appreciated the opportunity to practice life-saving skills.

"It was a little bit more overwhelming and stressful than we were expecting," Dix said. "It's kind of a trial and error, and it's a good opportunity to have some error."

On higher ground, medical and military personnel staffed a field hospital, where victims were brought for treatment. Participants at the medical unit develop skills in triage and first aid as well as delegation and prioritization when it comes to treating patients.

Kate Sloan was among the experts offering support and advice to participants working at the hospital. Sloan earned her bachelor's degree at Northwest in dietetics and nutrition in 2017 and participated in Missouri Hope as a student. Since then, she has become a nurse in the emergency unit at St. Luke's Hospital of Kansas City and has returned to Missouri Hope three times as a professional.

"We want to see everybody grow and develop their skills and their confidence. This is a really good, safe place to do it wrong," Sloan said.

"She added, "It's getting them to be able to employ those skills to think through some of our players that come through a little more critical than what we've taught and utilize those skills to delegate what can we manage here and what can we send out."

Throughout their participation in the exercise, students gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals of emergency and disaster management - and the psychological and physical impacts a crisis or disaster situation can have on people. Simultaneously, while the exercise teaches participants about task-related skills - such as search and rescue, first aid and incident command systems - it also helps students develop skills related to leadership, active followership and building highly effective teams.

"I want them to walk away with the ability to network with the subject matter experts as well as the other participants from the other universities that are attending and give them the opportunity to make sure that they can link together and be able to have opportunities down the road and doors open that might not be open before this event," Surprise said.

Missouri Hope is sponsored each fall by Northwest's Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education, a non-profit organization that coordinates full immersion experiences for individuals in the fields of disaster response and humanitarian relief. Partner agencies include Maryville Public Safety, Nodaway and Buchanan County Emergency Management, Nodaway County Ambulance District, LifeFlight and LifeNet Air Ambulances, SEMA Region H Marine Hazmat Team, and the 1-129th Field Artillery Battalion Missouri Army National Guard.

MOERA is a 320-acre parcel of land at Mozingo Lake Recreation Park, located east of Maryville on Highway 46. MOERA is operated by Northwest's School of Health Science and Wellness and provides a variety of outdoor education and recreation opportunities, including a challenge course, trap shooting and archery, canoes and kayaks, and outdoor research areas.