Creighton’s Emergency Medical Services Education, (EMS) program unveiled the completion of a state-of-the art ambulance simulator after construction during Winter Break as the program continues to look forward in health sciences and hands-on learning.
The ambulance simulator cost roughly $22,000 and Kevin Carritt – the Clinical/Field Coordinator for Emergency Medical Services Education program said that the most technical part of the simulation is the information the students bring with them, using the simulator as a tool rather than being dependent on a book.
With this new addition to the program students are excited to run simulations and emphasize how important it is to get practical education as they enter a field with life-or-death consequences.
Carritt pushes the students’ desire for hands-on experiences as opposed to passive learning, saying: “We can sit and lecture students all day long,” Caritt said. “But to actually have them assess, treat, and transport a real patient or as close as we can get to it is a much better learning environment.”
Paramedic program coordinator Bill Leggio hopes that the addition of the new simulator will allow for students to be better prepared for when they are actually called to action.
“It allows the students to make mistakes on a simulated patient in a controlled environment,” said Leggio. “We can record them and debrief; then walk through the mistakes. There’s a lot of benefit to that in a patient safety perspective preventing future errors.”
The first Creighton Paramedic program was in 1976, and the past 20 years have seen hundreds of EMS degrees. Graduates enter a diverse list of fields including: accelerated nursing program, non-clinical advanced degrees in graduate schools, and even Law school, along with those who go straight to the field.
After every simulation a debriefing occurs where the lecturers can explain to the class how they performed as they look back on tapes.
“Certainly it allows for reflective practice to develop,” leggio said. “And it also allows us to focus on their non-medical skills such as communication; interacting with team members, family, and patients.”
Students studying EMS restated Carritt and Leggio’s points on how unique their health education is compared to most students at Creighton University because of learning in a controlled environment such as the simulator.
Leggio says that one of the biggest benefits to come from advancement in the program stem from the possibility of working with nursing and some of the other health programs to really develop a prehospital scenario to healthcare and Carritt says that the new simulation will be the baseline to build from moving forward.