A Shift Already in Progress
Real EDs are never empty when disaster strikes. Now a scenario doesn't have to start that way either — trainees can walk into a shift already underway, patients already triaged and treated, before the incident even begins.
An emergency department is never empty when a major incident hits. There’s already a shift running — routine patients mid-treatment, staff already assigned, beds already in use. Training on a blank board skips that entirely, and skips the part of the job that’s hardest to practice: making room for a crisis inside a department that was already busy.
Now a scenario can start mid-shift. Play through a quiet stretch ahead of time — triage a few routine patients, run their tests, apply their treatments — and save that as the scenario’s starting point. Every time the scenario runs after that, trainees open the department already in that state: patients present, already cared for, clock reading zero. No fast-forward to sit through, no setup step to skip — it’s just what the shift looks like when the exercise begins.
The incident itself doesn’t move. Casualty arrivals and the METHANE alert still land exactly when the scenario says they should, no matter how long that quiet stretch took to build.
High-velocity MVC is the first scenario built this way — three routine patients, already through triage and treatment, waiting in Fast Track before the crash ever happens.