Eryn Brennan
In Motion staff writer
In the Emergency Medical Services program, the focus is on making sure that future paramedics and emergency medical technicians, or EMTs, are as prepared for their careers as possible.
“Everything we’re doing is to try to make it real,” explains Kenneth Moorehouse, an EMS instructor at Daytona State College.
A sentiment that Michelle Wolcott, an adjunct instructor, reaffirms.” It’s a chance to give them real practice so that when they get into the field they’ve already done it.”
The instructors employ different teaching methods to prepare their students. One such method is teaching students how to treat patients on life-like mannequins. The students run scenarios with an adult and an infant mannequin that can breath, talk, move and even die.
Instructors can adjust the mannequin’s vital signs, such as heart rate and blood pressure on a computer, and students are supposed to respond to them like they would to a real person in distress. The computer records everything that happens during the scenario, so that if a student makes a mistake, their instructor can go over it with them.
“We hope the mistakes they make, they make here, so they’re not making them in the field,” says Moorehouse.
Instructors also like to use faculty volunteers to pretend to be “patients,” although they haven’t been able to find any volunteers this semester. Volunteers pretend to be in distress and the students would respond just as they do to the mannequins. The addition of live people will add a realistic aspect to the scenarios.
“There are endless possibilities and live actors really amp up the memorability of a scenario,” says Georgia Jenkins, an EMS instructor at DSC.
Towards the end of their training, students are given a mass casualty incident, or MCI for short, to respond to. The instructors set up a complex scenario with multiple dummies acting as victims and real people, who distract the students in various ways. The students have to decide which victims to respond to first and figure out what needs to be done to help them all while trying to ignore the distractors. After the MCI is over, there is a de-briefing where the instructors go over what the students need to improve upon.
The recent terrorist attacks in Paris bring home the importance of such first responders because no one knows when disaster, whatever its cause, can strike. Such preparations are the difference between life and death and seconds count.
Although the students will be going into a stressful line of work, instructors try to make the environment in which they train a fun one.
“We make it an entertaining atmosphere. It’s a serious profession and we want them to take it seriously, but we’re also a big family,” says Wolcott.
To learn more about the EMS program or if you’re a faculty member that wants to volunteer to be a patient for the EMS students for the spring semester, e-mail Georgia Jenkins at JenkinG@daytonastate.edu