Sedation and Trauma Simulation

By: Hans Hurt, MD, GECC Volunteer Physician

Simulation has been a great addition to the standard lecture format of teaching the Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs), and has provided an opportunity to observe the wide skill set they have developed. There are no high tech simulators in such a low resource setting, but the ECPs manage to get in the mindset with improvised bottles of bug repellent to mimic Ultrasound motions, a USB lanyard for an oxygen hose, and pens to represent needles for chest decompression. When there was down time in between patients, we had the opportunity to use the Emergency Department to use the normal equipment and run through the progressions of a trauma assessment and FAST ultrasound exams. It was great to see the ECPs’ thought processes and be able to help them refine parts of their physical exam and optimize their Ultrasound imaging.

Towards the end of the month we worked at transitioning some of the senior ECP’s into taking on the leadership role with the simulations. I was impressed by what they observed and the helpful feedback they were able to provide the Juniors. The ECP’s were excited to learn the new techniques and get the focused time to practice.