Selected Podcast

Responding to an Active Shooter Incident

Date: 30 September 2021
It’s a hospital CEO’s worst nightmare, the call that tells them that multiple members of their team have been gunned down by an active shooter. Shock and anger engulf not only the community where it took place, but the entire workplace as colleagues mourn the loss of their friends. Crisis experts Bob McNaney and Brian Ellis who recently helped Allina Health with their active shooter incident will walk you through those first few hours and the actions you need to be thinking about as you deal with the chaos in the week to follow. Allina Vice President, Kerri Gordon will share first-hand accounts if managing this crisis. Come discover the lessons learned and steps you can take now, to better prepare for a day you pray never happens.

SHSMD Connections 2021 Virtual runs October 19-21. Register today!
Transcription:

Intro: The following SHSMD podcast is a production of DoctorPodcasting.com.

Bill Klaproth: This is a special podcast produced onsite at the SHSMD Connections 2021 Annual Conference in San Antonio as we talk with keynote speakers and session leaders direct from the show floor. Now, a conversation with Kerri Gordon, Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs and Conny Bergerson, Director of Public Relations at Allina Health.

Their session, Responding To An Active Shooter Incident. Conny and Kerri, welcome to the podcast booth here at SHSMD connections. We appreciate both of you stopping by. Kerri, can you tell us about your session?

Kerri Gordon: Sure. First of all, thank you for having us. We'll be going through and talking about some of our experience at Allina Health. We're an integrated healthcare system that serves most of Minnesota and little bit of Western Wisconsin. And we've unfortunately sort of had to navigate through quite a bit of crisis over the last, two years. COVID obviously, but then we also were in the heart of the civil unrest related to the murder of George Floyd, that was very much in our backyard. And then after that, we had some personal tragedy with members of our leadership team. And then after that, we had an active shooter incident at one of our clinics in one of the communities we serve. So what we're hoping to share with folks tomorrow is just some of the strategies and what we learned through that and, hopefully, teach some of our learnings so that if anybody else, unfortunately, would have to face that situation, they could learn what we learned.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah. Nothing going on in Minneapolis at all. Just been, you know, just quiet last year or so. You certainly have had a lot on your plate. So Conny, I know a lot has been happening as Kerri said. So talk about the active shooter incident. As I'm thinking of it, I've never been through it, but I think there's a during and then there's probably an after. When it happens, in the middle of it, I can imagine it's chaos and confusion of what do we do. There's an active shooter, what do we do first?

Conny Bergerson: Some of the things from getting that initial call is just, you know, like what can I do and what can our team do? And so one of the things that we did is like I handled the boots on the ground. That's what we needed to do. And so it was getting out to the community, getting with the spokesperson and the leader who was going to be part of a press conference, taking those calls from media. And then Kerri, she was part of our incident command team. So she was handling a lot of the stuff. I was boots on the ground handling media and handling coaching for spokespeople.

And so that initial day, really, I mean, it's kind of hard to remember exactly because you're just so into it, but that was just all setting up and then figuring out like how can we communicate with the community? How can we communicate with the media? How can we help our team members in a way that feels good to everybody? And then how can we just kind of look at what's next?

Bill Klaproth: Right. So Conny, did you have a plan in place already? "In case we have an active shooter, this is what we do" or do you have a general crisis plan? You talked about getting out into the community, having a spokesperson, setting up incident command. It sounds like, if this ever happens, we kind of know what to do.

Conny Bergerson: Yeah. I think one of the important things to think about is leveraging all of the tools that we already had in our toolbox. When I say incident command, we had an incident command structure that we used. I would say even COVID we had an incident command, any other kind of crisis type of situation.

So we really leveraged the tools that we already had. So the incident command is one of those. Knowing how to work with law enforcement. Those relationships that are previously built, law enforcement, media spokespeople, having those in place makes it much easier to respond quickly because you already kind of have that team built.

Bill Klaproth: Absolutely. So Kerri, you were the incident commander, is that right?

Kerri Gordon: No. Conny got on the road right away. As soon as we got the call, the first thing I did is connect with Conny and say, "I need you to get out to Buffalo," which is about an hour away from the Yeah so we needed to get her in the car. And then my role really was to stay connected to the conversations that were happening around the system, things like notifying other stakeholders and, you know, just getting things organized so that when Conny got to Buffalo, she could be assisting the team that was on the ground, that was facing a lot of pressure as you can imagine and that initial press conference.

By day two, you start to really settle in and get organized about how are we going to provide -- first and foremost for us was how do we provide care to our family, which included the victims, included the employees who helped treat and triage the victims. So there's a lot of those types of folks that you need to be thinking of. And our leadership team was that was first and foremost, what they wanted to do and continues to this day that that's our kind of north star of how do we provide the best care for those who are deeply impacted.

And so that's kind of how we sort block and tackle in those moments. And then by day two, you know, you're starting to have to try and get more organized because it's a story that lasts a number of days, weeks, months.

Bill Klaproth: So what happens in the aftermath then when you talked about in the days after it, when it's over and people want the information, and you have to keep updating the community? What happens then?

Kerri Gordon: Yeah, I think some of the best things that we did and on good advices, we set up a website be cause you get an overwhelming amount of media requests right away and, you know, this was national news, and so just a way to organize the information that you want to release. Conny did a lot of working with the hospitals that received the victims to make sure we are coordinating and protecting, you know, taking the lead from the victims and their families of what information they wanted released. So we just got really organized by day two about how we were going to release information to the public in a way that felt like it was honoring what people wanted. And so we had a website where we would regularly post the updates to. We would post pictures and the media knew where they could go and get updates from us. And that just really helped alleviate some of the ongoing kind of volumes of requests so that you didn't have to deal with them one-on-one. You could deal with them through an organized way.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah. So Conny, you're the Director of Public Relations. Kerri, you're the Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs. Let me ask each of you. Conny, as your role as Director of Public Affairs, what lessons did you learn through this?

Conny Bergerson: The lessons that were most important throughout all of this is, again, not to continue that leverage conversation, but all of the work that you can do before something like this, before a crisis happens is so important. So building those relationships that you build with members of the media, the relationships that you build with members of law enforcement or EMS or whatever. It could go on and on, but those become so important. And then also, being a touch point for the families that were affected by this and other employees that had questions. That was something that I took very seriously. And I took that to heart and that is an ongoing thing. And really just trying to kind of create a bubble around them, like Kerri said, like not releasing information until they were comfortable with and helping them navigate how to-- Many of them had not dealt with media before and they were getting phone calls and contacted via social media and people sitting outside of their homes. So helping them navigate that and building those relationships during a crisis.

So really, for me, it was the relationships that we had previously built and then creating those relationships because, you know, when we get back to Minnesota after this conference, the clinic is reopening. And there is a trial that's going to happen. And so this is a long game. It's not a short game. So this has been something, those relationships that we felt during the crisis too, now we're really leaning back into those as we have new things come up. So I think relationship-building was the one lesson for me, that the pre-relationships and then the relationships built during the crisis were highly important.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah. That makes sense. You talked about building relationships and that groundwork sounds like it starts early. There's a lot of time building those relationships. It's so important. Okay, Kerri, so how about you? You're the Communications and Public Affairs Vice-president. What were the lessons you learned?

Kerri Gordon: You know, I think one of the things we did right away and healthcare is such a community, is we reached out through a number of associations saying, you know -- unfortunately I think others have been through this and what can we learn from them. And the healthcare industry community was really generous to get on calls with us and our leadership team right away day two and three and say, "This is what we went through. You know, this is what we wish we had to do over on." And so we were able to incorporate that into our plans. That was really valuable and just the sharing of information, which is part of why we're here is we'd like to pass that on if anybody else finds themselves in that situation.

And I think the other is just our organization has very strong values and we try and live them out. And that was our north star and our touchstone because, you know, at times you have to make a lot of decisions. You have to make decisions quickly. So reaching out, getting help, getting additional support, delegating and just really sticking with your organizational values was probably the most important way that we navigated.

Bill Klaproth: Yeah. Well, it certainly helped you through, it sounds like.

Kerri Gordon: Yeah.

Bill Klaproth: Well, you know, this topic is something that I don't think a lot of people like to talk about. Nobody wants to think about an active shooter or these types of tragedies or crisises happening. Unfortunately, it seems to be the world we live in. So, thank you for being here to share your insights with everybody here, because unfortunately it seems like we all need to be prepared for this in our hospital marketing and communications because again you never know when this is going to happen. So it sounds like you really have to be prepared for this. So thank you for bringing your insight to SHSMD Connections this year. We appreciate it. Thank you again.

Kerri Gordon: Thank you for having us.

Conny Bergerson: Thank you.

Bill Klaproth: And sign up for the SHSMD Connections Virtual Conference, October 19th through the 21st 2021, which will feature two days of new sessions plus recordings from the in-person event. Go to SHSMD.org/education/annualconference to learn more and to get registered. And please join us at next year's conference, SHSMD Connections 2022, September 11th through the 14th at Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland outside of Washington, DC. And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels. And to access our full podcast library for other topics of interest to you, visit SHSMD.org/podcasts. I'm Bill Klaproth. As always, thanks for listening.