South Texas' Nonprofit Air Ambulance
HALO’s EMS Academy is currently conducting two classes: Advanced Emergency Medical Technician and Emergency Medical Responder (Texas State Guard-Medical Brigade, Corpus Christi Company, Alamo Area Group). This past Saturday (Oct 4) in Alice, the students received live training in Vehicle Extrication at Wilkinson Iron & Metal, who provided the vehicles. Extrication is the process by which entrapped patients are rescued from vehicles. The students were eager to apply what they learned in the classroom in real world scenarios.
The Alice Fire Department/Rescue demonstrated the effectiveness of their rescue tools in removing the wreckage away from entrapped patients. The firefighters explained the importance of scene safety and communication between Rescue, EMS and the patients. The students practiced their trauma assessment skills, proper patient removal, with spinal precautions and immobilization, of mock patients from crashed vehicles. The students were able to complete the “packaging” of the patients and prepared them for transport by placing the immobilized patients onto stretchers and into an awaiting Guardian EMS unit.
At the end of the day, the students were both excited and tired at the same time. Having to think on their feet, develop a strategy for removal of patients and then changing the plan when it was not working, all while attempting to meet the goal of safely removing the injured patient in a timely manner and providing rapid transport. The students learned the importance of communication and working together as a team as well as working with other resources; such as Fire-Rescue and Law Enforcement.
HALO EMS Academy would like to thank all the entities involved in making this training such a success for our future EMS responders.
