Northwood Fire/EMS train in simulated scenarios

On Monday, January 26, members of the Northwood Fire & EMS department responded to two emergency scenarios in a unique setting.
One event had the members of the department called to respond to a mother who had unexpectedly delivered a baby. The other event involved a call for a man who was having chest pains.
What made the scenarios unique was that they were being held in the parking lot of the fire department, in a mobile training simulator.
The training took place in the Simulation in Motion-Iowa (SIM-IA) mobile education truck, part of a statewide program to bring training opportunities to EMS providers, hospitals, businesses and community members.
The SIM-IA vehicle emulates an emergency room on one side and an ambulance on the other. It is one of three that travel across the state.
The SIM-IA vehicles are provided by Wellmark Blue Cross and the University of Iowa School of Nursing. The truck that came to Northwood is based out of Des Moines.
The SIM-IA vehicle travels to emergency and volunteer agencies in the state at no cost.
The vehicle includes a wide array of medical and emergency equipment and several patient simulators. Those simulated patients can be made to appear with a variety of medical conditions, and can be equipped to breathe, blink, respond, bleed and respond in ways that simulate emergencies ranging from farm injuries to gunshots to severed limbs to stab wounds to almost any scenario that could end up in an ambulance or hospital scenario.
The patient simulators can also be used to practice a number of procedures, including blood pressure, monitors, IVs, tourniquets, drilling into bones, placing breathing tubes and many more.
On January 26, the Northwood volunteers took part in two training simulations.
One had them in the hospital environment, where they had to treat the prematurely born baby. They practiced the techniques they would use to assess if the baby was healthy, and ways to address issues that may arise after an unexpected delivery in the home.
They had a chance to place IVs, including with a drill in place. They also could practice with a camera down the baby’s throat to guide a breathing tube into place.
All this while the simulated baby breathed and its heart beat.
In the other end of the truck was the ambulance simulation. As they took their spots in the ambulance, they were told that a 911 call had been placed when the man complained of chest pains.
The crews practiced how they would respond in that situation. They began by making sure he was responsive, then asking questions about potential medical history, food and medicine and potential causes of chest pain.
As they monitored the man’s vital signs, took blood pressure and practiced other techniques and received advice on how they could try new techniques, or improve their responses.
Guiding each scenario and reviewing their responses were two trainers with years of medical and emergency experience.
Aaron Bauch was in the control room in the middle of the SIM-IA vehicle, responding as the ambulance patient, watching the crew over video monitors and providing guidance as they practiced how they would respond.
Chuck Cross oversaw the hospital room scenario with the premature baby, overseeing the responses of that scenario and helping the crew practice some methods and equipment that they have experience with, and with some that they may not yet have encountered.
For the Northwood department members, despite the patients being simulations, the experience and training gained may help them in the future when the medical scenarios are real.