Heartbeat: Feeling the heat at Sandwell Hospital

January 15, 2020

Picture this – the alarm is sounding and you realise there’s a fire engulfing the tunnels of our hospital. Would you know what to do? Luckily for us, we have dedicated fire safety, security and estates teams that know every inch of our estate and plan for such events.

In October you might have thought you were seeing an emergency unfold before your eyes if you saw fire engines on-site at Sandwell Hospital. In fact, what you would have seen was a controlled fire safety exercise that had been carefully planned with West Bromwich Fire Station.

Each year we work with the local fire station to help simulate a real-life emergency call out. This is very much a two-way exercise as it allows both the fire crew and our teams to check their procedures and practises are as efficient and effective as they need to be. Using the hospital provides a safe environment to prepare for complex situations that may arise in real-life situations.

Taking the lead on our side was Sarah Ludlow, Specialist Fire Training Officer. Working with Dale Pound, Crew Commander and Pete Finazzi, Watch Commander together they planned the event from start to finish. This exercise had some unexpected twists and turns thrown in to really test those taking part on the day.

This included the threat of chemicals and contractors that had been unaccounted for.

Sarah commented: “Preparation for this event took over two weeks of collaboration with Dale and Pete. We went into great detail to ensure that we had every opportunity to fully test the procedures in place for both the Trust and the fire station. Lots of people lent their support and we all played various roles. This included everything from the police to ambulance crews. Santokh Sagoo and Phil Hanson from our security team even joined us as well to make this as realistic as possible. Overall it was a good exercise and both sides took learnings away from it.”

Dale said: “The outcome from the exercise was that all the casualties located in the basement area of the hospital were found by crews. It took slightly longer than expected which we will review. Our biggest learning on the day was not to overthink and to deploy our crews quicker.” He added: “We’d like to thank everyone from the hospital for use of the excellent facilities.”