"Definitely out of your comfort zone," said Ryan, who had just completed the Jackson Township Fire Department's airway obstacle course on Tuesday. The training, conducted Monday through Wednesday and organized in partnership with OhioHealth EMS and OhioHealth Learning, gave every township paramedic a chance to train.
Paramedics were presented with four scenarios and timed as they completed the course, crawling into tight, dark spaces to access mannequins in peril. One station simulated a person trapped under a rock slide, another a rolled car. Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) had to use one of several different tools at each station to open a patient's airway and could not repeat a method.
"It's to make you use all the tools in your toolbox," Dr. Robert Lowe, EMS medical director for the OhioHealth system, told firefighters.
The course is unique in that "it's a little bit of everything," said Dr. Brad Gable, OhioHealth Learning's medical director for simulations. It's not just airway intubation training. It also combines the stress of a timer and of confined spaces, allowing paramedics to train for unusual situations while also covering basic skills.
"We can talk about different techniques, different goals," Gable said. His hope is to simulate real life experiences.
Each scenario was set up with PVC pipe and outdoor cloth to create compact, dark, box-like spaces in which mannequins were secured at different angles to simulate the different events. The scenarios are based on real-life cases that Lowe, Gable and other organizers have seen in the field.
"It was totally different than what we normally do," said Chad Layton, who's been a firefighter for about 12 years. Firefighters at Jackson have training events at least once a month, and Layton said they train in some capacity daily. The airway obstacle course was a first for the department. He called it a good change from the the mannequins-on-the-table-style training he's accustomed to.
"We don't always have intubations like this," Layton said, referring to the process a paramedic uses to open a patient's throat and insert a tube down the trachea to aid breathing.
"Not everybody's gonna be perfectly still in a perfectly lit room with five guys there to help you," Lowe said.
Lowe works with 13 EMS agencies through OhioHealth EMS, but also serves as Medical Director for Jackson Township Fire. Lowe said OhioHealth EMS holds training events once a month for each agency they work with. "It changes based on who we're training," Lowe said. For this training, OhioHealth EMS teamed up with OhioHealth Learning, the division in charge of simulations, to create an obstacle course that would challenge the firefighters.
"It helps build our confidence so when we get out to the real scene we perform like we should," Ryan said after completing the course. He chose tools he was less familiar with to complete the most difficult scene in the training.
"They can tell you 'use this, use that,' but I want to challenge myself," Ryan said.
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