A simulated emergency situation helped some Confederation College students practice their skills for the real world.
.@Confederation Health & Protective Services students responded to simulated shooting/stabbing Friday to prepare for real emergencies. #Tbay pic.twitter.com/mNtxIXmMB9
— @country105news (@Country105News) April 22, 2018
The activity involved around 50 students in the Paramedic, Practical Nursing, Medical Radiation Technology, and Medical Laboratory Assistant programs.
Second-year Paramedic student Amanda Martret helped plan the scenario involving a fake shooting and stabbing in a lecture theatre, where students had to evaluate, transport, and treat actors playing patients.
It’s to help them practice keeping calm when dealing with similar situations on the job once they graduate.
“Get everyone used to the adrenaline, and the lights and the loud sounds, […] screaming patients, aggressive patients,” Martret explains, “It just really prepares us for the field.”
Martret says that as a first-year student, it was hard at first not to crack jokes about the scenarios they were acting out.
She points out that once students remember that events like Friday’s staged attack do happen in the real world, with real lives on the line, “You take everything, all your skills, very seriously.”
Paramedic Program Co-Ordinator Tanis Miller explains Friday’s hour-and-a-half long exercise was also meant to help the students co-operate with different services like they will in the field, as Nursing students jotted down patients’ information relayed by Paramedics-in-training.
“Most of these students will be graduating–my second-year Paramedics will be graduating and working this summer.”
The college has been doing exercises like this one for the past four years. (Staff Photo/Video)
