LAUSR

Background There has been an increase in violent acts against hospital employees, including active shooter events. Emergency department (ED) staff must be able to respond to these events efficiently to ensure the safest possible outcome. However, few in our ED were aware of our hospital's active shooter protocol. We aimed to increase staff knowledge of and confidence in these guidelines. Methods We developed and implemented a 7-week spiral curriculum using the Kern model of curriculum development. Each week, a segment of the hospital active shooter protocol was featured. Multimodal instructional methods including posters, instruction at daily team huddles, descriptions in the weekly division newsletter, and email summaries were used. A 10-question assessment was administered to ED staff both before and after the implementation of our curriculum. During both assessments, staff were asked to rate their confidence in both knowledge of and ability to follow hospital active shooter guidelines. Results There were 95 and 102 participants in the preintervention and postintervention periods, respectively. The median proportion of correct answers on the knowledge assessment increased when comparing preintervention with postintervention performances (P < 0.05). Staff confidence in both knowledge of and ability to follow active shooter protocols increased after the implementation of our curriculum (P < 0.05). Conclusions Our 7-week curriculum resulted in improved knowledge of and confidence in hospital active shooter protocols among ED staff. Given that our sample was an unpaired convenience sample, inferences from our analysis were limited. Tabletop simulations are currently underway to further reinforce and clarify concepts.