COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article

Front. Disaster Emerg. Med.

Sec. Disaster Medicine

Volume 3 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/femer.2025.1519991

Kern's Six Steps to Implement Simulation in Public Health Crisis

Provisionally accepted
Mona KroussMona Krouss1,2,3Lara Musser DoLara Musser Do4Suzanne BentleySuzanne Bentley1,3Daniel Alaiev BbaDaniel Alaiev Bba2Amit UppalAmit Uppal5,6Matthew D LangstonMatthew D Langston4,7John E ArboJohn E Arbo4,7Laura IavicoliLaura Iavicoli1,8Alex- Sungbae LeeAlex- Sungbae Lee2Jessica PohlmanJessica Pohlman2Katie WalkerKatie Walker2Cara TaubmanCara Taubman10,2,9Michael MeguerdichianMichael Meguerdichian10,2,9*
  • 1Elmhurst Hospital Center, Elmhurst, New York, United States
  • 2New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, New York, United States
  • 3Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, United States
  • 4Jacobi Medical Center, Bronx, New York, United States
  • 5Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York City, New York, United States
  • 6Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York City, New York, United States
  • 7Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York City, New York, United States
  • 8Mount Sinai Hospital, New York, New York, United States
  • 9Harlem Hospital Center, New York, New York, United States
  • 10Department of Emergency Medicine, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, New York City, New York, United States

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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic resulted in a rapid influx of critically ill patients, necessitating adding intensive care unit (ICU) beds and redeploying non-ICU clinicians to critical care areas. New York City Health + Hospitals (NYC H+H) applied the Kern's Six Steps Curriculum Design framework to deploy a ventilator simulation course across the system to build preparedness for ventilator management in non-ICU providers. In this article we describe how our quality improvement initiative prepared the largest public hospital system in the country to take care of intubated COVID patients for the "second wave" by applying Kern's Six Steps. Through this description, we offer how applying a framework, like Kern's Six Steps, is a model that structures interventions for success and can be applied to future disaster preparedness educational strategies.

Keywords: Kern's Six Steps, COVID, Emergency response, Special pathogens, Critical Care, Workforce expansion

Received: 30 Oct 2024; Accepted: 21 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Krouss, Do, Bentley, Bba, Uppal, Langston, Arbo, Iavicoli, Lee, Pohlman, Walker, Taubman and Meguerdichian. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Michael Meguerdichian, New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation, New York, United States

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material