SESSION DESCRIPTION

Walk through a nursing home's 4 year journey to improve and meet CMS exercise requirements with collaboration of a volunteer fire department and a high school biology class. 

This presentation will go through the exercise successes, pitfalls, and improvement goals for a rural nursing home since 2017 after the 2016 CMS Emergency Preparedness Rule. The first half of the presentation will be provided by the Maintenance Director overviewing his experience from the nursing home and how having waiting on a perfect exercise only hinders opportunities for growth. The second half will be led by his son who will provide exercise lessons and recommendations to support healthcare facilities in designing and conducting exercises in a simplified and easy to do manner. 

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About the Presenters:

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Perry Watson, Director of Maintenance

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Perry has been working as a Director of Maintenance for Long Term Care Facility's since 2007. His current role is with "The Wolfe Living Center" in Harrah Oklahoma. 

He also serves as a volunteer Firefighter with Hickory Hills Fire Department and has been with them since 2008 but started his volunteer fire service in New Hampshire in 1978 and became an EMT in 1981.  

Perry later moved to Florida and continued to serve his community through church volunteer disaster response teams providing food services to First Responders and survivors of tornados and hurricanes. He also has experience in logistics and materials management with Walt Disney World and worked on the Hurricane Rideout Teams. 

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Tobais Watson, Exercise Planner

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Tobias Watson is an Exercise Planner with Constant Associates and has a passion making preparedness exercises practical and applicable. He has over 10 years of professional experience encompassing emergency management, firefighting, and emergency medical services. Using his knowledge of field response, he is better able to understand the needs of those in the first responder/receiver capacity and the differences between paper plans and frontline needs.  

Mr. Watson graduated from Union College in Nebraska with a Bachelor of Science in International Rescue and Relief. His highlights from college include five weeks of survival and rescue training in the Colorado wilderness, and a Capstone semester in Nicaragua studying and applying skills in survival, austere medicine, global health, and firefighting. 

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Mr. Watson has served in multiples roles for emergency management providing training for emergency response, guidance for COVID-19, and program management and strategic development of healthcare emergency preparedness. His previous role was the Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for a two-campus hospital with a Level II Trauma Center in Lincoln, NE. 

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