Nurses Practice For Emergencies | Video

Kristin Clouston | 6/28/2012

God forbid we ever have to deal with an anthrax attack. But if it happens, public health nurses say they want to be prepared. More than 60 city and county health workers participated in a Point of Dispensing or POD exercise where they practice distributing mass vaccinations.

Connie Griffin from Bismarck-Burleigh Public Health explained, "The story was there was some anthrax that was sprayed at a theater, so everybody that was at the theater was exposed to this anthrax."

Volunteers say they mostly had to answer questions.

Taylor Zako shared, "Do I take a bunch of medications that I can`t pronounce?"

Jacquelyn Graff added, "It was really fast and simple and even when we were really lost someone in a vest could tell you what`s going on."

Which is good because workers are evaluated through the entire exercise.

"The evaluators are kind of tough on us. They go through and watch what we do and they keep us on task so that we`re following the instant command system, that we are asking the right kind of questions, that we`re following the protocols in our policies," Griffin said.

Since this is an exercise, the victims get M&M`s instead of actual pills. The smart ones said they were getting "pills" for their entire household.

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