Air Medical Safety Network

Emergency Preparedness Lab

Real events. Practical exercises. Better preparedness.

How do you know your emergency response plan will work when you need it?

An emergency response plan is only as effective as your ability to put it into practice. The Emergency Preparedness Lab helps air medical programs test their preparedness through realistic scenarios informed by actual accidents, incidents, and lessons shared across the industry.

Drawing on the historical experiences documented through the CONCERN Network, these exercises allow teams to challenge assumptions, examine how they make decisions, identify gaps in their procedures, and strengthen their ability to respond when the unexpected occurs.

  • 0 scenarios
  • Built from 0 real events
  • Air and ground
  • Day and night

Put Your Plan to the Test

  1. Choose a ScenarioExplore realistic exercises based on events experienced by air medical programs. Select a scenario that challenges your team's emergency preparedness.
  2. Test Your ResponseAdapt the exercise to your organization and work through the situation. Examine how your procedures, communication, coordination, and decision-making hold up.
  3. Learn and ImproveReflect on what worked, what surprised you, and where improvements may be needed. Apply those lessons to strengthen your preparedness and share what you learned so others can benefit.

The library

Scenario Registry

Plan Your Exercise Year

A sound program exercises its whole plan at least twice a year. It runs exercises by day and by night. It covers every transport mode it operates. It involves every discipline the plan touches, including pilots or drivers, medical crew, communications, maintenance, and administration.

After each exercise, the team debriefs, writes an after-action report, shares it with all staff, and tracks each corrective action until it is closed.

The same steps apply after a real event. Open a scenario of the same type and use its form to document what happened and what you learned.

Check your accreditation standards and your regulator's rules for what applies to your program.

Transport modes you operate

Learning from Experience

For more than four decades, the CONCERN Network has helped air medical programs learn from the experiences of others. The Emergency Preparedness Lab builds on that legacy by transforming historical events into practical opportunities for learning.

The purpose is not simply to practice an emergency response plan. It is to discover what we may not know about our ability to respond before an actual emergency reveals it.

Read the history of the CONCERN Network

What Did You Learn?

Every exercise offers an opportunity to strengthen preparedness, both within your organization and across the air medical community.

Share what your team learned, including what worked, what surprised you, and what you would do differently. Those experiences can help improve future scenarios and strengthen preparedness across the industry.

  • Do not include the names of people, programs, or patients.
  • We review every entry before anything is posted.
  • Posted lessons are combined and reworded. They are never shown as one program's account.

Share through the Air Medical Learning Network

The Learning Network is where AMSN receives lessons from programs. Choose "Lesson learned" or "Practice worth sharing," and name the scenario you used.

Share what you learned

Talk it over with other programs

The Emergency Preparedness working group is where members compare how they plan and run exercises.

Visit Working Groups

Terms

Terms and Definitions

Programs use different names for these plans and exercises. The filters use the terms below.

PAIP
Post Accident Incident Plan. The plan a program follows after an accident or incident.
ERP
Emergency Response Plan. The same idea, in the language of safety management systems.
Overdue aircraft
The steps taken when an aircraft misses a report or does not arrive on time.
Personnel emergency
A crew member becomes ill, injured, or unable to work, such as a crew medical emergency or an incapacitated pilot.
HazMat exposure
A crew member or patient is exposed to a hazardous material or energy source, such as fuel, fumes, or ultraviolet light.
Helipad emergency
An event on or near a hospital helipad that needs a joint response from the program and the hospital.
Lost communications
The steps taken when a crew cannot be reached. This often comes before overdue aircraft steps.
Drill
A short exercise that tests one part of the plan, such as the first radio call.
Tabletop exercise
A talk-through in a room. No vehicles move.
After-action report
A short written record of an exercise or event. It lists what worked, lessons learned, and corrective actions.
Inject
A new fact the evaluator adds partway through an exercise.
Functional exercise
The communication center and leaders work the event in real time. Field units are simulated.

About the registry

Sources and Method

Each scenario began as bulletins in the CONCERN Network Archive. Events of the same kind are grouped by event type, vehicle, day or night, patient aboard, and injury. Each group became one scenario.

A scenario is a template. It is not a record of any one event. No program name, place, or date is carried into it. Each scenario links to every bulletin in its group, so your team can compare the exercise with what happened in real life.

Every scenario comes from CONCERN Network bulletins. Events with a fatal injury are not used here.

Each scenario also lists field lessons. These are questions drawn from exercises and events that programs have shared with AMSN, with all details removed.

These scenarios do not replace your program's plan, your accreditation standards, or your regulator's rules. Check each one against your own procedures before you use it.

Run every drill safely. Begin and end each radio or phone call with "This is only a drill." Stop vehicles in a safe place first. Never simulate an emergency in flight.