Children's Hospital holds active shooter training with Royal Oak High School students
(CBS DETROIT) - Children's Hospital of Michigan held it's first-ever large-scale mock disaster training event Thursday.
It is unfortunate that we need to do a drill like this, especially with all of the shootings happening and have happened and that's actually one of the reasons why we started with school shooting because we had a feel like that if there is maybe the most common type of disaster," said Kelly Levasseur, the Medical Director of Children's Hospital of Michigan.
Levasseur said the drill is meant to stress every component of medical operations in order to identify potential improvements before a disaster happens in real-life.
"This is really real for our students and our staff," Levasseur said.
Student enrolled in a medical tech class at Royal Oak High School played the role of wounded patients during the drill.
"I feel like we shouldn't have to be doing this, but it's very necessary now," said student Katelyn Eckels.
Eckels is a senior at Royal Oak High School. She said it's an unfortunately reality we live in today, but understands being prepared could save lives.
"I feel like it's just really real, it could happen anywhere any day. I feel it's definitely scary, but it's good to know that people are practicing what's going to happen what can go on in these types of situations," Eckels said.
Archie Drake, CEO of Children's Hospital of Michigan, says Thursday's drill did reveal some important information for the hospital to learn from.
"You know, we can never be prepared for what's coming next so a drill like this is an opportunity for us to see how would we respond," Drake said.
Moving forward Levasseur said the lessons learned can help save lives, especially if the health systems encounter treating victims of a mass shooting.
"That's why we wanted to make sure we got the message out to the community that we're really working hard to make sure that our staff is all ready if we have any type of disaster," Levasseur said.
