As the second largest metropolitan area in Canada, Montréal has its share of risks for disasters and major incidents. In such events, the interoperability of emergency services is critical to effective interventions. As the emergency medical service (EMS) for the cities of Montréal and Laval, the Urgences-santé Corporation (USC) has close ties with several emergency partners on the territory, including police and fire departments. These different organizations have joined forces to develop a tabletop exercise program (TEP) to train operational managers to initiate a better-coordinated response on joint interventions.

The TEP was designed to enhance interoperability in the field by improving communication and the understanding of the roles, responsibilities, methods of coordination and decision-making in each of the organizations involved. The aim is for all of USC’s operational managers to participate in at least one exercise of the TEP within the first year of the program.

Selection criteria were established to gather, for each exercise, managers that are likely to work with one another on a real intervention. The TEP was also designed in such a way that its implementation would require few resources and yield minimal impact on regular operations.

After four pilot exercises to fine-tune the approach, the program was launched on October 5, 2018. We have now run eight exercises, each involving one or more USC supervisor. The response has been very favorable from the participants as well as their directors.

In the short term, the TEP helps managers understand their counterparts’ key issues, and has already yielded improvements in our joint interventions. In the longer term, the program will help identify specific training needs to better equip responders.