The best kind of crash happened Friday in Ukiah. First, the incident occurred within sprinting distance of the Emergency Room at Adventist Health Ukiah Valley. And second, all the injuries and fatalities were fake.
Because the crash featuring a drunk driver swerving into a group of kids on a sidewalk, then careening out of control and hitting another person on the other side of the street, was the latest “simulated Mass Casualty Incident” conducted as part of the annual Trauma Expo hosted at AHUV.
The Trauma Expo Friday at AHUV featured a simulated crash in which a drunk driver hit several pedestrians. (Peter Armstrong photo)Started nearly 10 years ago, the event is designed to bring people working outside the hospital – first responders staffing fire engines, ambulances and helicopters – together with people working inside the hospital so they can experience each others’ jobs in a way that cannot be achieved during a real emergency.
“We realized that those of us who work in the ER didn’t know what certain terms mean, or what it actually looks like when the air bag deploys,” said one AHUV employee at a previous event when explaining how the idea for the expo was formed. “And (first responders such as paramedics and firefighters) don’t always get to see what happens in the hospital after they drop off a patient. So we decided to bring all of the community providers together, in a controlled setting, so they can see what happens both outside and inside the hospital, bringing awareness and appreciation to each other’s roles, and providing better care overall.”
“It’s educational, as well as a team-building exercise,” Ukiah Valley Fire Authority Battalion Chief Justin Buckingham said previously of the expo, adding that it helps medical responders get to know the people that they usually only see for a few chaotic minutes before the next emergency call beckons. “Since staff at the hospital don’t typically get to see what we do in field, and we don’t get to see what they do at the hospital, this scenario allows us to see what the others do, and the challenges they face.”
For last year’s event, AHUV spokeswoman Cici Winiger said that Theresa Gowan of MedStar, who is also an instructor at Mendocino College, had the students in her Emergency Medical Technician class sign up for the event last year, “and they make this as part of their class.”
This year, Winiger added, the EMT students not only “participated in the actual simulated exercise, (but they) also taught one of the breakout sessions, the Back to Basics, to help first responders brush up on skills.”
Also participating in this year’s event were personnel from the Ukiah Police Department, as well as emergency medical responders from the UVFA, Reach and Medstar.
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