OhioHealth shares new tech with EMS

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Over a three-day period earlier this week, the OhioHealth Simulation Team from OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital and OhioHealth Grant Medical Center trained firefighters/paramedics from the townships of Orange, Liberty, and Genoa on the uses of the latest advanced pre-oxygen airway management technology.

The three fire departments work under the GHOLD (Genoa, Harlem, Orange, Liberty, Delaware) Protocol, an umbrella of set medical standards and procedures the group operates under.

The OhioHealth Simulation Team created three skill stations, a tabletop discussion in Rapid Sequence Induction (RSI) goals, and objectives of intubation, airway uses and placement.

The full-scale simulation consisted of using a manikin which had a heartbeat, made gagging sounds, and would throw up. The simulation situation involved a person that had fallen down several flights of stairs, which the firefighters/paramedics had to access, stabilize, and extract from the lower level of the station.

Once the patient was dispatched to the hospital, a discussion took place about protocols and what the preferred medications were for the simulation.

“Death by PowerPoint is not a great way to learn,” said Brad Gable, M.D., OhioHealth Systems medical director for Simulation. “You remember better when you do it, instead of when you hear it.”

Gable said the simulation team is out weekly conducting classes, lectures, and specialized training in Advanced Support, Advance Cardio Support, Pediatric Life Support, and Pre-Hospitalization Trauma Life Support with most of the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) departments in Central Ohio.

“Between OhioHealth EMS and OhioHealth Learning, we do over 1,000 EMS classes and trainings per year, and we train over 150 paramedics through our paramedic school each year,” Gable said.

In the table-top simulation, the group at the table was instructed on several case scenarios, what drugs to use in the different intubation situations, how to draw the drugs, and how to treat the patient.

The third simulation station consisted of using video laryngoscopes to intubate a patient.

“The modern teaching is chemicals and videoscopes,” said Rod Bair, RN, a member of the OhioHelath Simulation Team. “Videoscopes have been around for 10 years. It’s just a new wave of them in the last three to four years.”

Bair said he has worked in EMS for 36 years and in nursing for 28 years. He said it was his time to now give back by teaching the new techniques.

Steve Belville, RN, a member of the OhioHealth Simulation Team, said the things the team is teaching are things that the EMS departments normally don’t due.

Belville said he has 35-plus years in EMS and 28 years in nursing.

According to the team, by the end of the training, the firefighters/paramedics will be able to demonstrate the use of RSI in managing critically ill patients, discriminate when to use specific airway devices based on clinical scenarios, evaluate the use of video laryngoscope, and analyze when the RSI protocol should be utilized or avoided in different clinical scenarios.

Orange Township Fire Department hosted the three-day event at Station 361, 7700 Gooding Blvd., Delaware.

Orange Township firefighter/paramedic Brian Povse, right, tries to intubate a patient with one of the scopes provided during a training session held Wednesday as Rod Bair, a RN on the OhioHelath Simulation Team, watches in the background.
https://www.delgazette.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2019/05/web1_DSC_8344-copy.jpgOrange Township firefighter/paramedic Brian Povse, right, tries to intubate a patient with one of the scopes provided during a training session held Wednesday as Rod Bair, a RN on the OhioHelath Simulation Team, watches in the background. D. Anthony Botkin | The Gazette

By D. Anthony Botkin

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Contact D. Anthony Botkin at 740-413-0902. Follow him on Twitter @dabotkin.

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