by Corey Poonacha, Operations Manager
Jan 2024
Throughout 2023, our team trained on various emergency situations during our quarterly staff meetings. In the month of September, the SPSC staff received CPR training from our favorite trainer, Johnny Bell with Medic 2. This was a much more thorough training course than any we have had before. All of us were able to prove our understanding of AED machines and CPR and pass a test to receive official certifications. This will be something we revisit each year to ensure that we are able to aid in the direst of emergencies.
In our summer newsletter, I detailed our first weeks of building evacuations and fire drills, and the challenges that came with them. As the summer progressed, we executed two more series of drills to ensure all our seniors were familiar with the procedure of exiting the building in the safest way possible. The final of the drill series was with a surprise triggering of our actual building alarm. We were worried that the loud alarm would be too frightening for our seniors. But, with all the prior drills of the summer this was no big deal, and they quickly exited the building in an orderly fashion.
These summer drills would just be the beginning of our safety training. In the months of September and October, we hosted three Senior In-Home Emergency Preparedness Talks done by the City of Seattle. The talks were requested by our seniors and were done in Khmer, Spanish, and Vietnamese. The presenters discussed the importance of being prepared for emergencies at home and the ideal components of a home emergency kit meant for seniors.
In November, SPSC hosted a Seattle Neighborhoods Community Awareness and Safety training. This training was in response to the recent robberies targeting Asian seniors. The training went over awareness of your surroundings, best practices to increase awareness in dim lit areas like parking lots, and much more. We will be looking to continue this type of programming for our seniors in 2024.
For the future, we are planning to incorporate more focused, scenario-based, staff emergency training in all our staff meetings. From going over chapters of our SPSC Emergency Preparedness Plan to more focused staff training with other medical situations such as seizures and strokes. These scenarios could be set up to “take” place during fitness or in the kitchen, allowing the team to learn how to adapt to each setting and rely on the staff available at hand.
In addition to our staff training, we look forward to putting together new types of earthquake drills and other evacuations as well as safety talks for our seniors in 2024!
