A team of paramedics worked together to carefully load the accident victim into an ambulance. The emergency medical personnel continued to monitor the patient while maintaining the necessary life support techniques as the vehicle left the scene.
The scenario is actually a training exercise for Paramedic and Emergency Medical Technician students at the UMKC School of Medicine.
The school’s EMS program purchased an ambulance in May from an emergency vehicle dealer in Toledo, Ohio, who also detailed it with UMKC’s blue and gold colors, the School of Medicine logo and program signage. The rear of the ambulance also displays the Freedom House Ambulance Service logo in honor of the first paramedics in the United States.
After getting the vehicle to Kansas City, EMS education program director Paul Ganss, MS, NRP, NCEE, CHSE, spent a few weeks having it equipped to look and perform like a real ambulance. The ambulance has also been modified to support the use of the school’s high-fidelity simulators, such as its SimMan 3G and SimMom manikins, in the field environment.
Ganss said the vehicle expands the program’s capability of creating a realistic experience and allows students in the School’s Paramedic and Emergency Medical Technician training programs to practice in a unique environment.
“We can set up calls around the area, put simulated patients out there, and the students go out and take care of them,” Ganss said. “It gives them the experience of working in that environment. Working in a moving vehicle, that is challenging and this makes it more real for the students.”
The ambulance is not used to transport actual patients, but Ganss said it is stocked with equipment that mirrors an actual in-service vehicle. Earlier this summer, members of the EMS education program took the ambulance to Hutchinson, Kansas, to participate in a state-wide field day training exercise at the Kansas State Fairgrounds. EMT students participated in a field operations night in July by responding to mock calls around the Hospital Hill campus.
UMKC’s Emergency Medicine Residency Program has expanded its training as well and uses the vehicle to allow residents to experience what takes place in caring for patients as they are transported to a hospital emergency room.
“Some EMS programs have a mockup of an ambulance to train in,” Ganss said. “What’s unique about our setup is that we’re a medical school that has a training and simulation ambulance and that we have expanded it beyond the EMS students.”