Implementation of chemical incident training in human health programmes

Abstract

The release of chemicals or chemical incidents can have dramatic consequences on human health and the environment. Health care professionals can provide invaluable help to respond to these events but appropriate training is limited in human health degrees in the European Union. Academics from De Montfort University (DMU, UK) and the University of Alcalá (UAH, Spain) are developing training to provide basic skills to future professionals to respond to chemical incidents. We comprehensively modified a successful previous training programme tested with pharmacists at UAH and created two research-led workshops with different levels of difficulty for the 2016/17 course at DMU: basic for Medical Science bachelor degree students; the other more specialised for Advanced Biomedical Science Master’s students. The basic training consisted of selecting public health interventions to control urban environmental contamination. Master’s students developed a complete plan to respond to a chemical incident including remediation of the environment using the novel recovery tools developed by Public Health England (UK). All undergraduate students highlighted that they learnt how to identify public health interventions to protect the public and 84% of the Master’s students reported that they learnt how to tailor an appropriate recovery programme. The research-led workshops, methods and tools used facilitated the acquisition of skills to respond to future minor scale chemical incidents.