How Prepared is UAB Hospital for a Mass Shooting?
When asked if UAB Hospital is ready for mass shooting, Dr. Jeff Kerby, chief of UAB’s trauma service, doesn’t hesitate.
“The short answer is yes,” Kerby says.
Mass shootings are increasingly common across the U.S. Just last weekend, two separate events in Texas and Ohio killed more than 30 people and wounded dozens more. Kerby says each emergency is different, but UAB has a plan.
“You know we have an internal process for mass casualties, disaster response, that we plan for, that we drill, so that everybody’s prepared, everybody’s ready and sort of knows what to do if something like that happens,” Kerby says.
This process is orchestrated by UAB’s full time emergency preparedness team, managed by Bill Mayfield. He says it’s an ever-evolving process. Team members draft plans, run a series of exercises, tweak the plans and repeat. Mayfield says UAB Hospital practiced the most comprehensive simulation exercise for a mass casualty event last December.
“We have patient actors and… law enforcement and fire and our researchers are doing the rescues for real and they’re transporting for real to our emergency rooms,” Mayfield says. “And the example in December, we deliberately tried to overload our ER’s to push them to their max.”
He says they add to this preparation by reviewing government documents and first-hand reports to gain insight from actual events.
The hospital has also learned from its own experiences. In 2011, when tornadoes ripped through Alabama, UAB treated over 100 patients in one night.
Whether it’s a natural disaster or a disease outbreak, Mayfield says the goal of emergency preparedness is to quickly establish a system to assess patients and coordinate care. But he says a mass shooting would present specific challenges.
“You typically get really short notice on an event like this and you get patients relatively quickly,” Mayfield says.
And those patients are more likely to have gunshot wounds. Kerby says UAB is well-prepared for these kinds of injuries. As Alabama’s busiest level-one trauma center, the hospital treated 700 gunshot wounds last year. Still, Kerby says there is a chance of falling short in an emergency.
“It’s always a concern,” he says. “You know, luckily, we’re a very well-resourced hospital.”
Both Kerby and Mayfield say the bigger concern is managing those resources, not only to ensure a steady supply of manpower, but also to make sure caregivers have time to care for themselves during such a traumatic event.
Editor’s Note: WBHM is a member-supported service of UAB, but our newsroom and business operations are separate.
How Alabama’s first commuted death sentence this century came about
Robin "Rocky" Myers has been on Alabama’s death row for more than 30 years. Then, on February 28, he became the first Alabamian this century to have his death sentence commuted.
Steve Reich has always been to able to hear the pulse
The 88-year-old composer, who talks as fast as the interlocking phrases of his music, looks back on crucial moments in a career that moved minimalism into the mainstream.
There’s a lot to unpack in ‘Black Bag’ — a witty, sexy spy thriller
Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender play a high-ranking spy couple in Steven Soderbergh's new film. Black Bag offers Bond-style globe-trotting intrigue and marital dramedy.
Photos: Across the U.S., sky gazers marvel at the blood moon lunar eclipse
As the moon moved through the shadow of the Earth, it was also being illuminated by light from the sun — causing the moon to appear as if dipped in a deep red hue in a stunning celestial sight.
Hamas says it’s willing to release the five American hostages in Gaza
Hamas, the militant group the U.S. has labeled as terrorists, says it's willing to release the one living American hostage and bodies of four others it's held in Gaza since the 2023 attacks in Israel.
Dorothy Thompson: The journalist who warned us about Hitler
Dorothy Thompson saw the rise of Nazi Germany as a foreign correspondent in Berlin. A new series from Radio Diaries tells the story of Thompson's career as a radio broadcaster.