At 8:30 Friday morning, 375 students at UTHealth will develop new skills they may need someday responding to a mass casualty. 70 students will act as patients.
There have been more than 334 mass shootings in the U.S. in 2019.
Dr. Kevin Schulz is an organizer and an assistant professor of emergency medicine at McGovern Medical School at UT Health, and says as a Houston Fire Department Assistant Medical Director he knows how vital the training is, though he hopes the students never have to use it. “But the goal is that if they ever find themselves in a Las Vegas shooting-type incident they would have a little bit of understanding.”
The training will take place starting at 8:30 at the Houston Fire Department’s Val Jahnke Training Facility at 8030 Braniff Street south of Hobby Airport and is expected to run through 11.
It’s the brainchild of Cizik School of Nursing professor Elda G. Ramirez, who learned the ropes during the Hurricane Katrina response.
The purpose of the training is to simulate a real-world emergency, so if you are in the vicinity of the training don’t be alarmed by the sound of sirens and yelling.