More than 100 volunteers, students, faculty, and community partners came together on April 28 for Carroll College’s fourth annual Mock Mass Casualty Incident, a large-scale simulation designed to prepare nursing students for the realities of emergency and disaster response.
Built around a realistic scenario involving an attack at the Montana State Capitol during a legislative session, the simulation challenged students to make rapid clinical decisions under pressure while working through disaster triage, emergency transport, incident command systems, and trauma-informed care.
The exercise ran three times throughout the day, with students first triaging victims on Guadalupe Field before coordinating patient transport with Montana Medical Transport. Students then moved into an emergency command simulation led by local emergency professionals, including representatives from Lewis and Clark County Emergency Management and the sheriff’s office, before concluding with a trauma-informed care station facilitated by Carroll nursing and Master of Social Work students.
Now in its fourth year, the event continues to grow through cross-campus and community collaboration. The entire day, including the design and coordination of the complex simulation scenario, is led by Kate Pieper, assistant professor of nursing at Carroll College. This year’s simulation once again featured injury makeup and moulage created by Carroll theatre students, as well Spanish-speaking victims and interpreters from Carroll’s Hispanic Studies program, and new this year were student volunteers from Helena High School’s biomedical program, who helped bring the scenario to life.
The annual exercise gives Carroll nursing students the opportunity to practice clinical judgment, teamwork, leadership, and compassionate care in one of the most challenging healthcare environments imaginable.
KTVH-TV was on campus during the event and aired a story highlighting this unique hands-on learning experience: Carroll College nursing students conduct mass casualty training
