Nursing simulation turns into real-life emergency

What was originally planned to be a simulation exercise, where nurses had to rescue and transport injured victims from a ‘plane crash’ in jungle terrain, turned out in part to be a real situation.

During the simulation exercise, one of the student nurses slipped on the track leading from Ayre Hill to the Belmont Lookout, following a shower of rain and had to be stretcher borne to base camp and stabilized before being taken to the MCMH by ambulance {{more}}for advanced medical care.

Batch 38 consists of 51 student nurses, five of whom are males … an encouraging sign that the number of male care-givers is on the increase. Part of the curriculum includes mass casualty management and part of that training includes, among other things, emergency message handling and basic two-way communications.

For the last 15 years, the Rainbow Radio League Inc (RRL) has assisted the School of Nursing, now rebranded as the Division of Nursing Education (DNE), providing training in wireless communications and assisting with the staging of DNE’s mass casualty management simulations.

These simulations always involve wireless communications, the main reason being that conventional landlines and cellular phones are normally rendered inoperable following a major natural or manmade disaster. Therefore, familiarity with the operations of two-way radios is of critical importance during such scenarios, hence the training in emergency message handling, which involves the sending, receiving and prioritization of messages.

Following the training exercise, DNE lecturer Raphael John, who also conducts the disaster management course, held a debriefing session, where the entire exercise was critiqued by both students and lecturers, strengths and weaknesses identified and suggestions made for correcting any mistakes. John also thanked all the stakeholders, including the RSVG Police, RRL and other lecturers who served as evaluators, for their valuable input.

Guest lecturer and director of the RRL Donald De Riggs, during the evaluation, noted that exercises like this gave students hands-on practice and in this case, a real experience of moving an injured person on stretcher over rough terrain, in the narrow areas by two persons and on the wider areas by four stretcher bearers. He also noted the compassion and concern shown to their injured comrade, which is a necessary quality of all health care professionals. He went on to wish them the best in the final exams, which are just weeks away.

Fortunately, the injuries sustained by the student nurse were not life threatening and the twisted ankle is healing nicely. (Contributed by: Donald De Riggs)