The Center for Preparedness Education is proud to announce the successful completion of a conference that drew national participants from over 21 states. The conference organizers brought together 13 speakers from a variety of agencies in Joplin Missouri, that responded to the May 22nd F5 tornado.

Presenters told their stories of bravery, heroism and leadership in this crisis, but more importantly, they shared their lessons learned so that responders from across the country could apply these to their current emergency preparedness planning.

This conference marks the highest number of participants to any one educational event and has been touted through numerous testimonials as one of the "best conferences ever attended". Top leadership from CDC and HHS funding agencies were on hand to welcome participants and thank the presenters for their work in this disaster.

Attendees were challenged, in the opening remarks, to make at least one change to their disaster plans as a result of what they learned over the two day conference. The Center plans to follow up with participants to document the outcomes of this valuable learning experience.

Since social media is becoming an increasingly important tool in disaster preparedness and response, we asked participants who have Twitter accounts to share nuggets of information with their Twitter followers. Highlights of the tweets include:

• If your role is to be in charge in a disaster, you need actively participate in the drills!
• Drill until you fail to improve plans
• You do what you practice/drill
• Lessons learned: hands-free lighting, conversion to manual systems, RNs assigned to physicians, practicex3
• Hospital staff need to keep IDs in their wallet/purse so they can get across town after a disaster
• Emotional and psychological maturity is important when making disaster assignments for staff.
• Don't forget to include SHOES in your preparedness kit
• Street signs gone, recommends GPS in cars and spray painting street names in middle of intersections
• triage treatment is far more effective in MCI than transport
• plan beyond your facility, knowing your counterparts regionally improves response
• Is your hospital security recorder (DVR) on your backup power?
• dive teams were needed to search ponds, lakes, etc for victims. does your plan include this?
• radiology 825 x-rays 396 ct's in 18 hrs, had never been engaged in exercises. Engage clinical units
• clinical staff must be trained to work with logistics officer to avoid rumors re supply levels
• test your JIC, you may need it!
• get your info out 1st, radio moves fast & pick up info from social media.  get correct info out from your facility.  If media can’t get the story from you, they will find someone on the street
• texting HUGE resource 4 communicating with team leads in field.LEARN TO USE TEXT EFFICIENTLY
• Without Public Works there is no travel
• Incident Meteorologist recommended by NWS. Helped EOC make safety decisions during response
• Emergency planning: build systems,test systems,think outside the box
• can never do enough planning, and won't have time to read a huge binder teach staff your plan!
• major lesson learned LTC need to have patient info ready for evacuation tracking
• waivers were key in relocating LTC patients & keeping facilities funded
• LTCs must challenge leaders 2 establish where they fit into community disaster prep/resp process
• LTC MOU’s – most beneficial was with transportation vendors
• Oxford Home Healthcare staff having name badges & marked cars help staff get through road blocks to find patients
• Oxford Home health care-Every car they have has GPS so they could find their way easier- Is this something you have?
• Look at revising local plans to include behavioral health providers
• Assertive community treatment teams were used to make up for lost inpt psych beds. Good idea for mh systems to consider
• Need for responding teams to be SELF CONTAINED. Do not draw on resources needed elsewhere

Handouts and videos of the conference presenters are available at www.preped.org.

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In keeping with the season, here are five things you probably didn't know about Christmas:

1. It's a Wonderful Life appears on TV more often than any other holiday movie.
2.  Rudolph (the red-nosed reindeer) was actually created by Montgomery Ward in the late 1930's for a holiday promotion. The rest is history.
3. If you received all of the gifts in the song The Twelve Days of Christmas, you would receive 364 gifts.
4.  Holly berries are poisonous.
5.  In Mexico, wearing red underwear on New Year's Eve is said to bring new love in the upcoming year.

Happy Holidays from all of us at The Center for Preparedness Education!