EmergencyTech.org

Remote controlled simulation mannequins are nothing new to medical training. In EMS we’ve been using them for years and each iteration comes with a host of new features. The military’s new Medi-Man dummies, however, sound like they really hit the mark when it comes to accuracy:

The dummies are remotely controlled by the instructors to simulate particular injuries. Some have gaping belly wounds or spray blood – actually a red fluid that can be chemically tweaked to reflect different injuries – from severed limbs. Others might be breathing irregularly, their pump-activated chests rising on just one side. “A trainer can change a dummy’s behavior according to trainees’ actions,” says Staff Sergeant Glenn Gonzalez, noncommissioned officer in charge of the facility.

That’s only the beginning, though. The real breakthrough may be in the intensity of the scenarios. Over at Fort Bragg, it sounds like these dummies are getting the snot beaten out of them on a daily basis while the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division trains for deployments in Iraq.

Teams of six trainees race down a path in Fort Bragg’s forest. They must treat and carry any “casualties” they encounter along the way – usually two per team. Obstacles include barbed wire, trenches and holes filled with mud. Instructors throw training grenades to keep the medics’ heads down. “I guarantee you they’re exhausted by the time they reach this point,” Gonzalez says, standing near the barbed-wire obstacle. The idea, he says, is to make sure medics can make smart decisions about treating casualties even while scared and tired. Gonzalez and his fellow instructors have trained around 1,800 medics and doctors in the past year.

So, when these things make their way into the private-sector end of medical education they will have been well tested and, hopefully, most of the durability issues will have been worked out. The only people I know who beat on training equipment more than EMS folks? Military folks.

The proof, perhaps, is in the numbers:

“There have been around 2,400 soldiers killed in Iraq due to enemy action,” says Captain Earnhardt, division spokesman. “The reason that’s 2,400 and not 10,000 is this training.”

Via War is Boring

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Oh, those Canadians are at it again with all of their inventing and politeness. Well, this has nothing to do with politeness, unless your idea of “polite” is ensuring effective chest compression rate and depth during CPR.

Two engineering students from McMaster University have invented what they believe is the solution: the CPR Glove. They have entered a prototype of their innovative device in this year’s Ontario Engineering Competition for university students being held in Ottawa from Feb. 9 to Feb. 11. They are part of a 17-member team competing from McMaster.

The black, one-size-fits-all CPR Glove features a series of sensors and chips that measure the frequency and depth of compressions being administered during CPR and outputs the data to a digital display.

To be effective, compressions must be given at the rate of 100 per minute and at a depth of four to five centimeters.

A study measuring retention of CPR training published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that 59 per cent of the time, compressions were applied at the rate of only 80 per minute. Thirty-seven per cent of the time, the compressions were too shallow. CPR administered at these levels is not likely to save a person in cardiac arrest.

What I find particularly interesting about this is that it seems effective in many different ways: as a training adjunct, as a real-time indicator of compression effectiveness, and as an interface device for AEDs designed for bystander-use. Think of the effectiveness of cues like “deeper” or “harder” . . . well, you get the point.

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I know this is a bit dated, but I’m cleaning out the old “Stuff to Blog” folder.

Two rocket scientists EMS workers over at the London Ambulance Service have, rightly, become laughing stocks after their recent attempt at circumnavigating the British Isles because their on-board GPS moving map display told them to:

The crew had been tasked with taking the male patient 12 miles across Essex from King George Hospital in Ilford to Mascalls Park Hospital near Brentwood - a 12 mile journey which should have taken about 30 minutes.

But a fault in the ambulance’s on-board satellite navigation system sent the London Ambulance Service crew on an eight-hour round trip to Manchester.

A spokesman for the ambulance service said the crew set off in the early hours of Tuesday morning. They didn’t reach Mascalls Park Hospital until the early afternoon.

He said the crew hadn’t been to Mascalls Park before and only realised they were heading in the wrong direction when they reached the outskirts of Manchester.

Sure, the crew blames it on a problem with the technology, but we all know what really happened. Didn’t these fine fellows ever learn the old saw, “treat the patient, not the monitor?” And, if so, don’t they think that the same might hold true for other pieces of equipment?

(Reminds me of the old “Mondi Map Display” I used to have when I worked in Cheektowaga. -ed.)

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Here’s a good one from Brice Schneier over at the (quite excellent) Schneier on Security blog:

In the small Massachusetts town of Cheshire (pop. 3,500) there is reason for celebration, and dismay. You see, the Cheshire Fire Department has two problems: they need a new fire truck and they need to find a way to spend the homeland security grant that they recently recieved. A grant to the tune of $665,962, a mere 26 (yes, twenty-six) times their annual operating budget.

Don’t see the problem yet? Read on:

And the rub: The department is not allowed to spend it on a fire truck.

Instead, the town won a grant to fortify the ranks of its volunteer brigade. Its selectmen plan to huddle later this month to hash out a spending plan.

Asked how the money will be spent, Cheshire Fire Chief George Sweet cryptically replied yesterday: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

Sweet said he couldn’t say much more about the windfall. Indeed, Cheshire’s officialdom is a nervous wreck over it and is reviewing federal grant guidelines.

“We’ve never had this much money dropped in our laps,” said Cheshire town administrator Mark Webber. “People get fined and go to jail because they don’t handle money like this properly.”

Although the town is home to the Cheshire Cheese Monument (a quite impressive pile of cheese, at that), there is little else to justify this small town department receiving the largest grant award of any town or agency in the state of Massachusetts.

What this amounts to is nothing more than pork-barrel politics, say some Washington security insiders:

Security specialist James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington think tank, was blunt: “It’s pure pork. It has nothing to do with homeland security.”

The money comes from the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grants, a program that was absorbed into the Department of Homeland Security after the agency was established following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Asked about Cheshire’s grant, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Val Bunting said yesterday that the town “presented a multifaceted project proposal.” She said the grant could be spent over four years, but she would not elaborate .

Carafano said the emergency response program was designed to funnel money to small fire departments and has wide support in Washington “because everyone has a fire department in their district.”

But now, Carafano said, “the money is spent under the big lie that it’s about national security.”

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