Learning to Evaluate Multi-Disciplinary Emergency Management Teams

Emergencies can vary considerably in nature and may call upon different kind of organizations. the need for multi-disciplinary cooperation in general, and civil-military cooperation in specific, is still increasing. Training of multi-disciplinary emergency management teams is becoming more common practice. Nevertheless, the value of these trainings and exercises is questionable. Although scenarios are quite often realistic and challenging to the trainees, the degree to which they can really learn from these experiences depends on more than just the realism. The training situation may be too complex to get a good understanding of the team’s performance. A solid evaluation afterwards is therefore of utmost importance. However, an effective evaluation requires expert-evaluators. In many cases evaluators are themselves experts in the field, but that does not automatically guarantee them to be expert-evaluators. They need to be able to not only observe and diagnose the team’s performance, but also to give feedback in an effective and structured way. Improving the competencies of evaluators is therefore conditional for increasing the effectiveness of multi-disciplinary exercises from a learning perspective. Supported by the Dutch Home Office, a six-day course was developed combining practical experience and results of scientific research. The trainees learn more about observing multi-disciplinary team performance, conducting an evaluation with the team, and writing an evaluation report. Hands-on experience is combined with short theoretical reflections. Afterwards, the trainees follow an interactive examination during which their performance is assessed by two independent examiners. Up to now, six courses have been conducted and more are to come. Every course is evaluated based on which the next course is improved. Trainees come from first responder organizations, the military and other organizations (e.g. municipality). This paper describes the structure and contents of both the course and the exam, and discusses shared experiences.