Dozens of patients covered in toxic chemicals rushed to the Montreal General Hospital on Thursday after a train crash.
Fortunately nobody was really hurt, since the hospital was only conducting a drill to train doctors and nurses.
In the 'Code Orange' scenario, 40 people were pretending to be hurt by a train derailment and chemical spill in St. Henri.
The patients came to the hospital by private car, cab, and ambulance, which the organizers said was exactly how real patients rushed to hospital following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris.
To deal with the sudden influx of patients the MUHC tested a new method of triaging patients, attaching a barcode bracelet on each one in order to track where they were and what treatments they had undergone.
Organizers hope the system will reduce paperwork, and reduce the potential for errors as patients going through decontamination while being treated for medical emergencies.
The hospital also had to figure out how to communicate effectively with patients when doctors and nurses are wearing hazardous materials suits and have limited sight and hearing.
One solution was to keep patients in a bus as they arrived, and honk the bus's horn if a patient took a turn for the worse.
"The participants in the decon area, they're wearing personal protective equipment. When you're wearing this, you cannot communicate. People don't hear you," said Dr. Valerie Homier.
"So we need to find a way where if there's an emergency situation, for example, a patient deteriorates acutely, we need to alert our transports to come and pick up that patient and address the situation right away. So that's why we're using the honk and the lights."
In a mass emergency it is very likely that families will be separated, and so the hospital was also testing ways to unite families and make sure each parents could keep track of children and vice versa, and to make sure that people wouldn't panic if individuals went 'missing'.
