This year has been filled with natural disasters.  Hurricanes Harvey and Irma brought devastation and flooding to Texas, Florida, and several other states while the wild fire in California threatened people’s homes and destroyed businesses.  These events highlighted the importance of being prepared.

On November 15, 2017, CAC nursing students participated in the emergency response exercise that simulated a disaster caused by heavy rains and flooding in Pinal, Maricopa, and Gila River Indian Community areas.

CAC’s nursing students posed as victims of the disaster to help emergency department staff in the two area hospitals practice emergency procedures.

Other participants included tribal, state, county, and local emergency management, public health, EMS, ambulance providers, acute care hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, clinics, skilled nursing, long term care facilities, dialysis, hospice, home health, and other healthcare partners.

Arizona Coalition for Healthcare Emergency Response (AzCHER) Full Scale Exercise took place at Banner Casa Grande Medical Center and Gila River Health Care’s Hu Hu Kam Memorial Hospital.

Students learned about disaster planning and the importance of triage. The overall experience created a perspective that students do not normally see – disaster preparedness, training, and execution of policies and procedures on a large scale including multiple city and county resource responses.

To learn how you can become a CAC nursing student and participate in experiences such as this one, please call 520-494-5330, attend an information session (times and locations available at www.centralaz.edu/nursing), or contact advising at 520-494-5410.

“Listen to your heart” and join the community college nursing program with a “heart for helping people”.