April 2-3, 2008, 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
Earle Brown Heritage Center
6155 Earle Brown Drive
Brooklyn Center, MN 55430

Minnesota Emergency Readiness Education and Training (MERET), in collaboration with Minnesota Department of Health, is offering a two-day workshop to promote the care and safety of pregnant, laboring, and postpartum women and neonates during disasters. Building on MERET's 2007 workshops, this informative and interactive workshop will teach administrators, educators, and providers to identify, respond, and implement plans to address the universal issues for these two at-risk populations during prolonged public health emergencies. Through scenario-based exercises, role-playing, and roundtable discussions, participants will explore issues and create strategies for community-based collaboration in planning, pre-event training, and health care delivery for mothers and newborns.

Registration

Register Online

This workshop is free. However, due to space considerations, we cannot guarantee registration at the time of submission. After receipt of your registration form, we will notify you of your registration status and will send those registered a confirmation letter with details.

Who should attend?

• Administrators/Managers who make key decisions for their communities about the safe care of pregnant women and newborns from ambulatory care, emergency medical services, hospitals, emergency management and public health
• Providers: physicians, midwives, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, nurses, infection control professionals, lactation specialists, and physician's assistants
• First-Responders: paramedics, emergency medical technicians, police and fire
• Educators: maternal and child health, emergency preparedness

This training will enable you to:

• Demonstrate how the National Incident Management System (NIMS) changes multi-agency operations in a community with specific focus on pregnant, birthing, postpartum women and their newborns.
• Estimate the average daily volume of pregnant, birthing, postpartum women and their newborns in your community.
• Anticipate the impact of a public health emergency on pregnant, birthing, postpartum women and their newborns in your community.
• Identify issues and explore strategies for planning, pre-event training, and service delivery to pregnant, birthing and postpartum women and their newborns during disasters in low resource settings outside of hospital.
• Describe the psychological impact of a disaster on caregivers and victims and identify strategies to assess and enhance the resiliency of each group.
• Enable participants to appropriately triage these populations.
• Use ethical principles to support clinical decisions.
• Analyze preparedness plans to identify gaps in how service would be delivered and determine next steps in strategic planning for the care of mothers and newborns during disasters

Program schedule

April 2, 2008 (Day 1)

April 3, 2008 (Day 2)

About the Instructors and Planning Committee:

Mary Mescher Benbenek, PNP, FNP is a clinical assistant professor at the U of MN School of Nursing and has a clinical practice. She is also a member of the Minnesota Medical Reserve Corps and participated in a relief effort with that group following Hurricane Katrina. She has also been active on the Hennepin County Community Health Services Advisory Council representing Third District Nurses for the past seven years where the group has reviewed county disaster plans.

Laura Duckett, BSN, MS, PhD, MPH, RN is a faculty member in the School of Nursing and the Center for Spirituality and Healing. Her educational preparation is in nursing, educational psychology, child psychology, and public health. Her scholarship is focused on postpartum adaptations for families, breastfeeding, infant nutrition, maternal employment and breastfeeding, and parent-infant attachment. She also teaches ethics to graduate nursing students.

Patricia Hadfield, BSN, MS is the Nursing Supervisor at Hennepin County Medical Center, Level 1 Trauma Center. She has 27 years experience serving in a variety of clinical, education & management positions. Currently she is also functioning as the Coordinator of the Alternate Care Site Committee for the Metro Region under the Healthcare Facilities Partnership Program Grant. Pat is an active member of the hospital's Emergency Preparedness Committee and HICS instructor. She participated in setting up Camp Ripley for Minnesota's response to Hurricane Katrina.

Mary Jane Krebs Turnbull, BSN, PNP, MPH is a board certified lactation consultant and Infant massage instructor. She currently works for Health Partners Clinic in Saint Paul, MN as a pediatric nurse practitioner.

Mary Larweck, RN, MS, CIC, CPHQ coordinator and consultant for the U of M School of Nursing, MERET Program. She has over 25 years experience in corporate and private consulting related to infection control, quality improvement, and regulatory compliance in health care. Planning Committee.

Jeanne Pfeiffer, RN, MPH, CIC Clinical Assistant Professor, U of MN School Of Nursing. She serves as SON coordinator and content expert for the MERET Program. She has 35 years or of clinical experience at Hennepin County Medical Center, a Level I trauma and public teaching hospital. She started the Infection Prevention and Control Program and has 25 years experience as Infection Control Program Coordinator. She was active on the hospital Emergency Preparedness Committee. She is a member of the U of M Medical Reserve Corps. Planning Committee.

Shailendra Prasad, MD, MPH has worked as a primary care physician in resource strapped areas throughout his career- in tribal/rural areas of India and in rural areas of Mississippi. He was involved in post-Katrina work in Louisiana and south Mississippi for 20 months after the event. As part of the relief activities he was the medical director of a free clinic in South Mississippi that cared for evacuees from the gulf coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. He is currently an assistant professor at the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health at the University of Minnesota and also works as an investigator with the Rural Health Research Center at the School of Public Health there.

Robbie Prepas, CNM, MN, JD has been in hospital based clinical practice as a nurse midwife since 1993. She is an adjunct professor of midwifery at the University of California at Los Angeles. She has been involved in International Midwifery for the last 15 years working in Asia, Africa, South America, and Russia, teaching midwives in developing countries. In addition she worked as a consultant for the Center for Disease Control in Afghanistan in a maternal child health survival project. She has been a member of the Disaster Medical Assistance Team in California and has worked in disaster relief at ground zero in New York City, Guam, and Hurricane Katrina. Her DMAT team was the first to respond to the medical needs in New Orleans. She heads the Committee for Disaster Preparedness at the American College of Nurse Midwives.

Don Sheldrew, LICSW, MSW, NREMT-P works with the MN Dept of Health, Office of Emergency Preparedness as the Special Populations Planner to help engage the broader community, emergency planners and others associated in continuing to recognize ways in which those with disabilities and other special needs can be impacted by crisis and disaster. A major part of his role is in helping to assist communities in determining ways to improve response and to mitigate the negative effects of crisis. Don has experience responding to disasters including: Katrina, I-35 Bridge collapse and the flooding in SE Minnesota. He has worked incidents as a pre-hospital EMS responder, mental health professional, and as command staff.

Cecilia Wachdorf, CNM, PhD is a Clinical Assistant Professor and Co- Director of the Nurse-Midwifery Program at the U of MN School of Nursing where she teaches midwifery and women's health nurse-practitioner students as well as undergraduate Transcultural Nursing and Global Health courses. Dr. Wachdorf's background includes having worked as a nurse-midwife in hospital-based and birth center practices with women from diverse backgrounds, consulted on midwifery and women's health issues, and wrote and taught a curriculum in midwifery in the low resource setting of Papua New Guinea. She recently represented the American College of Nurse-Midwives at the stakeholders meeting sponsored by the National Organization of Nurse Practitioner Faculty to write guidelines for teaching disaster preparedness to advanced practice nurse practitioner students. She is a content expert on the care of women during disasters for the MERET program. Planning Committee.

Gary Zahn, RN, BSN is the Metro RHRC Principal Planning Analyst, Education and Exercise Coordinator. He has worked as a nurse at Hennepin County Medical Center in the Emergency Department and Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Prerequisite Training

Each registrant is required to complete the online MERET learning module 'Caring for Pregnant/Birthing Women and Their Newborns During Disasters: An Introduction to the Issues,' prior to the workshop.

Continuing Education Information

This program offers 690 minutes (11.5 contact hours/1.1 CEUs) in a structured continuing education experience under responsible sponsorship and qualified instruction. The program is designed to meet Minnesota Board of Nursing continuing education requirements for up to 13.8 contact hours. Participants must complete both days in order to receive a certificate.

Sponsored by

Minnesota Department of Health Office of Emergency Preparedness, with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Office of the Assistant of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR).

Minnesota Emergency Readiness Education and Training (MERET), funded under grant #T01HP006412 from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), DHHS, Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program. Carol O'Boyle, PhD, RN, at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, is the Principal Investigator.