Mt. Diablo HS Patient Care Pathway students complete Community Emergency Response Training

Mt. Diablo HS is proud to announce that 12 students in the school's Patient Care health career pathway recently completed in-depth Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training presented by the city of Concord, and participated in a graduation ceremony on Monday, Nov. 18, after learning life-saving skills that they will be able to share with their family and community, said teacher Dr. David Pintado. 

“Special thanks to Mrs. Trish Beirne, Emergency Services Volunteer Coordinator from the Concord Police Department and her team of instructors that came to our school for six weeks and prepared our students for catastrophic events,” Pintado said. “And thank you to our school administration for providing all the logistics to make this important event a success!”

The students participated in drills that required them to be sworn in as Disaster Service Workers and simulate how they would assist in emergency response if an earthquake damaged the school, Beirne said. "It was part of the actual drill," she said. "If they were to be called up to deploy with our team, the first step is to swear volunteers in as DSWs so they are covered by the state’s Workers’ Comp insurance."

The students rotated through the following stations:

• Incident Command System structure
• Fire Suppression
• Cribbing (a technique to lift a heavy object that is pinning a victim underneath
• Damage Assessment (to report to Command)
• Light Search and Rescue (of a damaged classroom to find and triage victims)
• Medical treatment (of victims’ injuries)
• Radio communications

Congratulations to the students, who have learned valuable skills as part of Mt. Diablo High School's Career Pathways program! More information about MDUSD's Career Pathways programs is here.