General rules and information:
Purpose:
To promote a healthy learning environment while forcing participants out of their comfort zones. These scenarios require paying attention to the details, and working closely as a team. It also spices up the run-of-the-mill training drill, and can sometimes bring in new ways of thinking. If the problem being presented is very complex, it may take a different approach toward solving it, that might go beyond the standard protocol and scene management. Those new paradigms might make it into general practice, which promotes growth within an EMS system.
Benefits:
There’s a constant pursuit to improve the skills, knowledge and abilities of EMS providers to meet the many challenges associated with assessing and treating injured or ill patients. One of the top methods for improving the ability of EMT and paramedic personnel is to participate in simulated patient scenarios that challenge the providers to assess and treat a patient with either a live actor or a patient simulator with a medical or traumatic condition. There’s information to be gleaned from the actor or simulator to develop the medical history, and there are clinical findings to help demonstrate how the patient should be treated that can be adjusted based on interventions given by the care providers.
Simulations can be used to prepare students for individual patient scenarios they’re likely to face in the field. It’s simply not enough to ask students to read assigned textbook material, learn skills in lab and clinical settings, and discuss patient scenarios. Students need to be immersed in scenarios that challenge them to coalesce all the knowledge, skills and abilities they developed and place them all into practice. Simulation training can be used to develop or enhance the skills of the EMS provider who has completed initial training and is actively working in the field. Simulations can be used to test the provider’s ability to care for certain types of patients, assess clinical proficiencies, address complicated patient presentations or be used for a variety of other reasons. The approach remains the same: Immerse the field provider in a situation that requires them to use all of their knowledge, skills and abilities to provide appropriate care and treatment. Upon completion of the simulation, the assessors can discuss positive and negative aspects of all aspects of the simulated case.
The value of an EMS competition, like the value of war games, goes beyond a simple venue for competing for a top spot. Each of the competitors have the opportunity to improve knowledge, skill and ability in the preparation for the competition. Because most competitions go far beyond a basic cardiac or stroke patient, the competitors must seek to learn more nuanced clinical presentations. Although there are many ways for prehospital caregivers to sharpen their knowledge, hone their skills and develop their abilities, training that involves simulation offers one of the best methods for improvement. Taken one step further, simulation within a competition environment provides a mechanism for improving all aspects of field care while simultaneously offering a fun, competitive environment.
