Sentara and the Navy partner in disaster preparedness exercise.

“You do what you practice,” says Bill Brown, Sentara Manager of Disaster & Emergency Management.

Sentara Princess Anne Hospital received military staff to help to practice the exercises.

Sentara Hospitals are involved in numerous exercises annually to help train staff and to gain experiences working with community partners.

Sentara and NAS Oceana recently took part in an exercise to practice coordinating health care for military personnel should a large scale incident ever occur.

The annual exercises staged this year at naval bases and installations throughout the U.S. in March are known as Solid Curtain-Citadel Shield 2012.

During this portion of the exercise, Sentara Princess Anne Hospital in Virginia Beach received about a dozen sailors and other military staff -some by car and others by ambulance. One of the goals of the exercise was to test how Oceana and the new hospital would coordinate providing health care to military personnel, should the need ever arise.

Sentara employees help in the annual exercises to practice coordinating health care for military personnel in case a large scale incident ever occurs.

Resources like community hospitals have long partnered with the military and other organizations to prepare for disaster, with the hope of never needing that training.

But that doesn’t stop Sentara from preparing. Sentara Hospitals participate in numerous drills each year to prepare for different types of incidents.