Athens Regional will complete its training for mass casualty events, this afternoon in its medical services building. This training is being conducted by the National Disaster Life Support Foundation Advanced Disaster Life Support class. These classes are developed by four academic centers – one of them the University of Georgia.

Exercise coordinator Jim Zerylnick says “you can only do so much in a class room, so it helps tremendously to have a realistic area based training, especially on a large scale with many patients”.

The exercise will include multiple actors and role players so health care professionals and emergency response personnel will learn how to better handle disasters and other public health emergencies. The audience may even hear screaming, sirens and yelling to feel what these potential situations may be like. The exercise takes a stress comprehensive, all-hazards approach to assist those who attend.

Today is then second and final day of the training exercise. The two day class totals to 15 hours of training for health professionals and emergency response personnel.