Course Length: 8 Hours Syllabus (PDF)
Tuition:            Call office Application (PDF)
Location:         NHSHP Schedule: Call Office

Course Overview

Basic Disaster Life Support (BDLS) is the didactic component of NDLS disaster preparedness training. It is a review of the all-hazards topics including natural and accidental man made events, traumatic and explosive events, nuclear and radiological events, biological events, and chemical events. This course is a comprehensive mass casualty management program, which includes a practical approach to casualty decontamination in addition to the all-hazards topics.

The unfortunate reality of a disaster or MCI is that often multiple injuries or fatalities, or both, are involved, and preparedness for the management of this type of situation is vital. The potential long-term psychological impact of disasters on responders and their careers is significantly ties to the availability of proper psychological impact management, an important area addressed in BDLS. Effective communication methods and proper interactions with the media are vital to operations during a disaster and are covered in this course. Community and hospital disaster planning is the foundation of an effective response to an MCI, and standardized preparedness methods and models are presented in this course. BDLS also includes a user-friendly, resource-based method of addressing the issues of a detailed assessment of community, state, and federal disaster resources. Certification in BDLS requires didactic course completion and minimal scoring on course competency testing.