Child Abduction Drill in King Abdulaziz Hospital - Al Ahsa
King Abdulaziz Hospital – Al Ahsa has successfully carried out an infant abduction drill planned by the organizing committee to measure the success of rescuing an abducted child to evaluate how prepared the staff can be in such an incident.
The Regional Executive Director of the MNG-HA in the Eastern Province, Dr. Ahmad Alarfj pointed out that “The drill was pretty successful bearing in mind it comes after a number of drills which evaluate how prepared the staff can be in such an incident”.
He also added “This experiment was carried out after forming a specialized committee that deals with child abductions. The committee consists of many departments and divisions including the Military Police, Communications, Media and Public Affairs, Social Services, Nursing, Health Awareness and medical staff. The committee held several meetings prior to this experiment to measure preparedness and to train staff to be ready if such an incident occurs”.
In addition, the head of the responsible team, Dr. Hisham Jawad Al Garm said that the abduction took the following scenario: the mother exited the rest room and found that her child was missing, immediately she notified the nurse in charge who notified the head nurse. The head nurse then carried out an intensive research of the ward. After confirming the child was indeed missing, the head nurse contacted the on-call nursing coordinator who informed the Communications department so they can announce the abduction with a specific code known only to the specialized team.
Dr. Al Garm said that “Each team member conducted his or her assigned responsibility promptly after hearing the code. In the meantime, the Military Police locked all the gates and doors and an intensive search was conducted for all cars and waiting rooms. After that, the suspect was arrested to be dealt with in accordance with the rules and procedures. After the suspect was arrested, a specialized nurse was sent to receive the child from the Military Police. The child was then taken to the Pediatric department to be examined by the pediatrician on call. Finally, the child was returned to his mother who was accompanied by a social worker the whole time”.
He concluded saying, “We are confident that the following drills will be carried out with even greater success because we had supervisors observing, monitoring and evaluating the team. The report will be sent to the organizing committee who will hold a meeting 48 hours after the drill to discuss an improvement proposal for the next drill”.