SANDY HOOK SCHOOL SHOOTING:

Carly offers her heartbreaking story of what happened inside Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. She shares what went wrong and right on that day, as well as the days and years that followed. Carly also sheds light on how a community can be proactive and prepared for the unthinkable. She gives real solutions on school safety, reunification and recovery in the aftermath of a crisis situation, and shares her journey through the unthinkable, with a focus on relationships and positive outcomes.

With the current COVID-19 crisis, Carly and the “I Love U Guys” Foundation team has dedicated significant time and resources to looking towards the process for reunification of students and staff into the school buildings and how to recover from this crisis. In her presentation, Carly shares steps on ways to reassemble the school community, secure trust and feelings of safety among students and families and collaborate as a community. She has spoken to thousands of community members and is honored to have a part in improving school and community safety.

MANAGING MILLENNIALS: UNDERSTANDING GENERATIONAL CULTURE IN MANAGEMENT:

Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, and Millennials represent different cultures, not just different age groups, within the workforce. Understanding how each generation sees leadership, money, work, family, and communication is critical for effective inter-generational engagement. If you oversee teams made up of individuals from different generations, this webinar will offer practical, research-based, insights into how to bridge “the generation gap.” The webinar will include both instructions, and a time for questions and dialogue.

DE-ESCALATION IN THE WORKPLACE:

De-Escalation for Healthcare

• Prevent violent behavior
• Maintain safety
• Reduce anger and frustration
• Help people develop a sense of hope and security

Workplaces have been doing a form of de-escalation training for years under the name of “conflict resolution” or “crisis management”. Vantage Point’s own Ben Fisher will describe de-escalation tactics designed to help teams identify instability in their environment, prevent it, and know how to handle it in their own best defense if the situation worsens. This “Run, Hide, Fight” paradigm is law enforcement’s go-to technique for civilians when a situation escalates to violence or a weapon.

For healthcare workers who are sometimes required to go into a situation where physical force is necessary, like securing a patient with hand restraints, we train people to use positive reinforcement through the interaction. This includes affirming a patient’s problems, setting clear limits, respecting the patient, and remaining calm above all else.

CREATING AN IAP:

Incident Action Planning

In this interactive session, participants will learn what Incident Action Planning is, why it is important, how to set SMART objectives, and the importance of working with external response partners during planning. In this session, participants will be walked through an exercise scenario and will work through writing an Incident Action Plan and also write SMART objectives to address a given incident and develop strategies and tactics to meet those objectives.

HSEEP PROCESS:

MANAGING THE RESPONSE TO HEALTHCARE CYBER INCIDENTS:

In the past few years, millions of healthcare records were breached due to cyber intrusions.  From ransomware to data breaches, DDoS and TDoS attacks, email compromise and fraud.  According to CSO, healthcare organizations encounter twice the number of cyber-attacks than any other industry.  Managing these attacks has been confusing; who takes the lead and manages the incident?

Healthcare emergency management has evolved over the decades from an ad-hoc committee to full-time programs with comprehensive policies and procedures.  The plans are based on an “all-hazards” approach, which means that they are written to address any incident that may affect their facility.  An annual hazard vulnerability analysis reveals their top priorities, and specific plans are written for those hazards.

However, when a cyber incident affects a healthcare facility, whether loss of connectivity or breach, it is not uncommon for information technology (IT) professionals to lead management of the incident.  Unfortunately, this can lead to confusion as to how their response interacts with the emergency management team and program.

A solution is to incorporate IT teams into the emergency management plan and program.  Emergency management (EM) teams can ensure the response is inclusive of patient, staff, and visitor safety.  EM provides three valuable assets to any emergency, including cyber events:

• Coordination among diverse groups:  A cyber event is potentially a patient safety event.  EM teams can make sure that all areas in the healthcare facility that will be impacted by the cyber event are a part of the decision-making process.
• Planning:  EM teams are adept at crating short, medium, and long-term plans.  For example, if the incident requires you to take the fire safety systems off line, the EM team can ensure that fire watches are instituted, public safety agencies are notified, and clinicians can be informed and advised.  Patient care and safety cannot be compromised due to a cyber incident.
• Communication:  A common failure during disasters is communication.  From lack of information to wrong information, keeping in communication with all stakeholders (inside and outside the facility) is a key component to success.  EM teams keep communication protocols, tools, and lists as part of their EM plan.

Through real examples of our team responding to cyber incidents, we will discuss.  For instance, In 2017, our health systems experience attacks from PinkSlip, WannaCry, and Petya.  We were fortunate that none of our systems were ransomed, but the response to quarantine and eradicate the viruses from our systems was massive.  In 2018, in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael, one of our hospitals lost connection with its offsite servers for weeks due to the devastation of the local communication infrastructure.  Fortunately, with all of the events, a coordinated response ensured we were able to maintain the care of our patients, the security of our systems, and the safety of our patients, staff, and visitors.

WATER OUTAGE + POWER OUTAGE:

On 18 July, the Sterile Processing System (SPS) wastewater line collapsed at the Veterans Health Indiana (VHI) medical center disabling all capability to decontaminate, process, and sterilize instruments.   Immediate steps were taken to maintain continuity of care.  Mitigation efforts included assistance from our community and VA partners to process instruments.  We sent our DaVinci instruments to IU Health, SPS staff to Northern Indiana Health Care System (NIHCS) and Eskenazi to use their SPS for processing.  Additionally, we contracted with a courier service to transport clean/dirty instruments and with Steris for a mobile unit.  Overall, mitigation efforts allowed us to continue operations and carryout 4,297 procedures while our system was inoperable for almost 30 days.  The collapsed wastewater line presented serious hazards as it was located directly below switchgear requiring work around over 13,000 volts and was approximately 15 feet below ground.  Excavation of the line was extremely dangerous as it posed significant risks for collapse, entrapment, confined space and arc flash hazards.  This presentation tells our story on how we responded to the plethora of issues/hazards we encountered, mitigation efforts, other incidents we handled simultaneously, resources used, and lessons learned.

HEALTHCARE MENTAL HEALTH:

STRATEGIES FOR PRE-PLANNING YOUR RESPONSE AND RECOVERY:

This is an informational discussion on planning for recovery and demobilization prior to the event, what is important to capture during the event and how to get things back to normal. Looking at both long term and short cycle events that affect your facility with developing strategies to keep moving forward during the event while focusing on returning to normal business once it is over.