SLU Successfully Conducts Full-Scale Closed POD Simulation
On Oct. 10, Saint Louis University’s Closed Point of Dispensing team successfully conducted a full-scale exercise to simulate supplying life-saving medications to the campus community, and excelled, providing pill bottles to an average of 2,700 people an hour.
“Any time you can do better than 1,000 an hour, you’re doing very well,” said David Reddick, one of the team’s co-chairmen. Nearly 60 members of the SLU community served as mock patients, moving through the gymnasium at Simon Recreation Center multiple times to simulate several hundred total visits.
Nearly 100 volunteer students, faculty and staff from the School of Nursing, College for Public Health and Social Justice, the Department of Public Safety and Doisy College of Health Sciences provided the staffing to operate the POD.
This is the second full-scale exercise conducted by the team, which has worked for three years to be ready to supply medications to the community in case of a biological attack to the region. The team is prepared to dispense more than 50,000 courses of medications to the University in fewer than 48 hours in case of an attack here.