This four-day course is offered in Year One. The goals of the course are to introduce students to the principles of disaster medicine by focusing on natural disasters and disasters due to acts of terrorism and using hands-on activities and tabletop exercises to reinforce knowledge gained. Course includes faculty from the Department of Emergency Medicine and the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR). Following introductory lectures, students participate in hospital-based scenarios, regional disaster scenarios and disaster deployment scenarios. 

Course Goals

After participating in this course, medical students will be able to:

• Explain the fundamentals of disaster medicine and the role of the physician in preparedness.
• Be familiar with national and international response organizations and teams.
• Describe the morbidity, mortality, public health effects and mental health effects of natural disasters.
• Be aware of the ethical issues surrounding disaster response.
• Understand the medical management of disasters due to terrorist events.
• Experience issues in command, control, collaboration and scarce resource distribution in the disaster scenario exercises.

Contact

Grace Bryant, M.Ed.
Medical Training Program Administrator
Email: gbryant7@jh.edu

Time Commitment and Course Length

The course runs for 20 hours over 4 days.