Medical Student
The focus of a senior medical student should be on selecting a residency program that is the best fit for them, not necessarily selecting one solely based on whether there is a disaster medicine fellowship program associated with the program. That being said, programs with emergency medical services (EMS) and/or disaster medicine fellowships typically have faculty members who may be involved in disaster preparedness/planning or response at local, regional, or national levels and can serve as powerful mentors for you throughout your training and offer a variety of experiences for involvement. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to consider the robustness of the faculty or extracurricular opportunities in prehospital or disaster medicine that a program offers when applying for residency.
Given its broad scope, there are several ways to get involved in disaster preparedness and disaster medicine extracurricularly, while still in medical school. Basic Disaster Life Support (BDLS) and Advanced Disaster Life Support (ADLS) are two courses offered by the National Disaster Life Support Foundation that offer a great introduction to the provision of medical care during a mass casualty incident (MCI). Similarly, the American College of Surgeons' Stop the Bleed course provides instrumental knowledge of hemorrhage control after an MCI, and as a medical student you can register to serve as an associate instructor for teaching this course to laypersons in the community. If you are a certified Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), or one of many other healthcare professionals, you can register as a full instructor and teach independently. Students serving as local first responders (EMS, police, fire) can apply - with support from their organization - to courses funded by the federal government through the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium. For example, the FEMA Center for Domestic Preparedness in Anniston, AL, offers a wide variety of in-person, hands-on courses related to disaster medicine and preparedness, such as Healthcare Leadership for MCIs and Hospital Emergency Response Training for MCIs, to name a few.
At your institution, be sure to ask about upcoming hospital and regional disaster drills. Your initial role may be simulating a disaster patient, but you could get involved in planning the next drill, which may involve writing patient scenarios, facilitating the drill itself, and/or recruitment of simulated patients for the event. If you are more interested in the scholarly study of disasters (preparedness for or response to), consider reaching out to emergency medicine faculty who may be involved in research on mass casualty simulation, emergency department disaster preparedness, or the public health aspects of complex emergencies. If there are no projects available to you locally, there are several yearly internships offered by various U.S. government agencies through the Virtual Student Federal Service which may allow yo uto gain some experience in these fields.