'This is like Star Trek': New patient simulators make training more realistic for P.E.I. paramedics
CBC
The male body is lying on the gurney with a severed leg. The paramedic tightens a red strap below his knee to stop the bleeding.
Then he checks his vitals. Heart rate: 121. Blood pressure: 76 over 40.
"We'll get an IV going in this guy," he says to another paramedic.
The situation looks real, but fortunately it's not.
The paramedics are Matthew MacLeod and Matt Stryde, instructors at Holland College. The man with the amputated leg is one of four new patient simulators the school bought for its paramedicine program at a cost of $350,000.
The simulators look like mannequins and make training more realistic for students. They can breathe and bleed, and their vitals can be tracked on a screen. It allows them to mimic emergencies a patient could experience, such as cardiac arrest or even an amputation.
"Not every student is going to be able to deliver a baby, not every student is going to be able to run a cardiac arrest," MacLeod said.
"So we wanted to make sure that they have those core essentials that's going to be expected of them to be able to arrive to any emergency that's going to arrive through 911."
MacLeod and Stryde were learning to use the simulators this week before bringing them into the classroom in the fall.
Stryde said the tools used to teach paramedicine now are much more advanced than when he went to school.
"When I started my first paramedic programs we still had blue plastic mannequins, hunks-of-plastic type things. This is like Star Trek, this is night and day from what I started with."
MacLeod hopes the simulators will be a valuable resource, not just to students but to paramedics in the field.
"We do provide some training of faculty that come in, we have lots of lab assistants that work on the ambulance that come in and train and we hope everyone is able to make use out of these throughout the years."
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