ASSESSING RETENTION AND ADEQUACY OF EMERGENCY RESPONSE TRAINING FOR A POINT OF DISTRIBUTION (POD) EXERCISE

The goal of the research is to help government agencies and non-profit-organizations (NPOs) better prepare for events that require a point-of-dispensing (POD) unit. The research team developed a training exercise that simulated a real world anthrax outbreak, by using groups of untrained nursing and pharmacy students. These students were then separated and trained in two different groups: asynchronously and synchronously. By outlining how to successfully reuse a point-of-dispensing (POD) unit during emergencies, the researcher compared Qualtrics surveys that were distributed at the beginning and end of the exercise. These surveys were meant to show students’ understanding of POD exercises and then evaluate their understanding of pivotal concepts (retention, cost, new algorithms, and teaching methods). It was found that the retention of new material dropped drastically after two months regardless of the type training. The first month retention dropped to 77% and the second to 46%. On top of the retention needed, eight trained volunteers would need to be stationed for every 100 people attending the POD. No city would be able to supply the amount of trained professionals required to satisfy these requirements, so untrained civilians would need to be used. The cost associated with consistently training this amount of untrained citizens would surpass any budget. The only feasible chance to train the amount of volunteers needed, would be to have the material readily available ahead of time. Asynchronous training is the only viable means to producing a training program with the scale and retention levels that a real world event would require.