You don’t need moulage or mannequins to get your team ready for the next mass casualty incident (MCI). According to Dr. Matt Harris (PEM physician at Cohen Children’s Medical Center and EMS medical director), some of the most effective MCI prep happens quietly, during the average shift—without a single overhead page.
Here are 3 ways to build MCI muscle memory today:
1️⃣ Play the “Cohort Game”
Pick a moment during your shift and ask: If five trauma patients rolled in right now, which rooms could I clear, and which patients could I cohort safely?
Do it out loud with your team. It takes 30 seconds and builds the mental pathways you’ll need when the real chaos hits.
2️⃣ Run a Pharmacy Check
Look at your supply of RSI kits or trauma meds. Ask: Do we have enough to manage multiple critical patients?
If you needed 5 kits for simultaneous intubations, could you get them fast? This quick check exposes a weak point in many MCI plans—and can spark valuable conversations with pharmacy and nursing leads.
3️⃣ Do a Hot Wash Walk-Through
After any resuscitation or chaotic shift, take 5 minutes with the team and ask:
- What if this had been part of a larger event?
- What slowed us down that we could fix now?
- How would we handle 5 more patients like that?
It’s informal, but it’s a game changer.
This post is based on insights from Dr. Josh Belfer’s interview with Dr. Matt Harris on the Doctors Are People Too podcast, where they discussed pediatric mass casualty preparedness from the ED front lines.
🎧 Listen to the full episode now: Mass Casualty 101: Real-Life ER Disaster Planning with Dr. Matt Harris
🎧 About the Podcast
Doctors Are People Too is a podcast that explores the intersection of medicine, sports, and pop culture. Hosted by Dr. Josh Belfer, each episode explores the different ways in which medicine plays a part in everyday society.
Dr. Joshua Belfer, MD, is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of HipPEMcrates. He can be reached at HipPEMcrates@gmail.com.
