ABSTRACT
Perhaps the greatest obstacle to effective planning for the hospital’s response to bioterrorism is educating and maintaining preparedness among its own staff. Hospitals typically provide required in-service training in diverse areas such as safety, infection control, patient rights, etc. These areas are emphasized because hospital workers at all levels are often faced with situations requiring specific knowledge of policy and procedures. The challenge in planning for events that the health care worker may never encounter, such as bioterrorism, comes in reinforcing knowledge and behaviors that may never be needed. Printed educational material may be lost, never read, or unavailable for review when needed. Standard educational formats such as lectures and conferences (whether live or taped) must be repeated frequently to diverse groups of workers and may consume large amounts of time and resources in their preparation. Any educational strategy must take into account that hospital staff may turn over at a rapid rate and that employees may work at more than one hospital or health care facility and thus be exposed to differing messages and divergent policies.
