St Joseph’s Hospital is a public hospital of St Vincent’s Health Australia. St Joseph’s has a proud tradition of more than 100 years of providing quality health care in a compassionate and highly personalised atmosphere. The hospital provides inpatient, outpatient and community service, and is a centre of excellence in rehabilitation, mental health for older people, Huntington Disease and palliative care.
Considering the age of the hospital being over 100 years old St Vincents are commendably proactive is preparing their ECO members as much as possible. Ageing buildings present difficulties and challenges during emergency situations that aren’t faced in modern buildings.
This exercise was based on an active fire within a staff meal room on level one of the building, the emergency eventually leading to a stage 3 evacuation. The responding wardens were required to utilise fire compartments and fire stairwells to safely evacuate patients of varying mobility with non-ambulant evacuated via emergency slide sheets. (staff members acted as patients).
This was an excellent opportunity to test the hospitals code red procedure and response from the ECO members. The exercise was found to be a very valuable learning experience for everyone involved.
We’d like to congratulate the local staff members on their involvement in the exercise and on the excellent response.
St Vincents Health Australia are a very proactive organisation in the field of emergency management and we are proud to partner with them in providing solutions and services that suit their specific needs.
