Screaming, fake blood, and smoke helped residents from the OSF Saint Francis Medical Center Emergency Department learn what it is like on scene of a disaster by getting hands-on with the East Peoria Fire Department on Thursday.
Brandon Bleess, the Director of Pre-Hospital and Disaster Education, said that the goal is to understand what can happen to a patient before they arrive to the emergency room.
“We do some disaster scenarios, we do a little transport scenarios, [and] we do extraction scenarios,” Bleess said.
1470 WMBD/Kristina Leahy
The disaster scenarios included Confined Space Medicine. Residents had to crawl around a simulated building collapse to find patients inside with obstacles and smoke.
John Wipfler, an Emergency Physician at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center, said it helps teach the residents how to remove someone from a dangerous situation.
“Especially if their leg is caught, and what are the things you need to do and not do,” Wipfler said.
Residents also participated in a scenario where partners had to navigate a large room to find a number of bodies after a disaster with zero visibility.
1470 WMBD/Kristina Leahy
The vehicle extraction scenario teaches the residents how first responders on scene remove a patient from a crashed vehicle, and transport them to the hospital.
Getting hands-on helps the residents understand the stressors that first responders go through to get patients out of danger and to a hospital, said Bleess.
“Every job has its own stressors. People are putting their lives on the line on a daily basis doing these jobs,” Bleess said. “It’s easy to sit in a hospital setting and look outward at this, and not fully understand what actually is entailed.”
1470 WMBD/Kristina Leahy
The scenarios help give an understanding of what a patient has been through before they arrive at the hospital, or what a first responder has been through if they were to be injured on a scene.
“The firefighters, police, EMS, [the] tripod of public safety do a great job out there,” Wipfler said.
