What do hospitals do with patients in a psych ward when there's a fire drill?

When I was in college, I worked at a private psych hospital. We had “drills” but it was an outside walk with patients “no pressure” for a drill. We just had a Senior Aide do a “double check” that all were off the ward. A clip board with all patients and staff was used as a check list when we arrived at our outside area. That was over 40 years ago.

Patients don’t leave hospitals for fire drills.

When there is a drill, or an investigation of a possible fire, the staff all have tasks they need to perform that get written down with times performed, people who performed them, etc. and given to hospital administration.

A real fire is a different story.

All hospital staff are required to complete an annual evaluation to demonstrate that they know exactly what to do when certain emergencies occur (ie. stolen/missing child, person with a firearm, smoke/possible fire, actual fire, flood, etc.) so that everyone will be prepared as possible when the event occurs.

When I was in a hospital, they were like, “meh,” and we stayed in our ward.

An excellent question. If you have combative patients, some in bed or chair restraints, how could you be sure you’d be able to get them out in case of a real fire. Do they roleplay?

I googled and found this.

I love this question. How would you handle them outside the building? Similarly, how would you handle inmates in a large prison fire?

So here’s what we do in the hospital I work… in a fire drill we bitch about the noise, but other wise completly ignore it. In an actual fire we move the patients to the next fire compartment (each ward is split into several 30 minute fire compartments and each corridor in to 60 minute compartments) and wait for the fire dept to sort things out, retreating to the next compartment as needed. I have done this in a real fire and it took us 71 seconds to evacuate 30 patients. The building would have to be literally falling down around us before we would evacuate outside.

@cockswain You would do everything you could to move them elsewhere within the hospital. Going outside would be a last resort.

At least prisons have large fenced-in yards…

So funny, I worked in a hospital for seven years that had a psych ward and to tell you the truth whenever we had a drill I never saw the psych or ward b patients, thank GAGA there was no actual fires or tragedies in those 7 years I was there..