Local doctors and nurses sharpened their skills in critical care when the STARS mobile simulation stopped by Olds on May 2.The training exercise took place inside a red, retrofitted mobile home parked just outside the Olds Hospital and Care Centre.Inside the RV, participants tended to a mannequin on a stretcher, hooked up to hospital equipment.From a room at the back, Dave Allison, a flight paramedic and mobile simulation leader for STARS, could speak as the patient and control his condition.Throughout the day, the doctors and nurses were presented with various scenarios, from a patient with chest pains to another vomiting with shortness of breath.The medical teams would treat the mannequin and afterward, discussed how well the exercise went and what options they could have taken.According to Dr. Kimberly Dykin, who's practised in Olds for three years and participated in the exercise, the simulation was a close imitation of what she's seen in the field.“Obviously the patient doesn't respond to you like a real patient,” she said. “When there's somebody in front of you, it's easier to talk with him and interact with him but it was pretty accurate for some of the things we see in our emergency room and it went the way things often do in our emergency room.”Bruce Parsons, a nurse and paramedic, led the simulations. He said STARS runs the program to bring training to different communities.“We basically try to mimic best we can a learning environment that's mobile,” he said. “The whole goal is to ultimately strengthen the chain of survival.”Parsons, who has been with STARS for 14 years, defines that chain as the collaboration between all medical professionals: paramedics, EMTs, physicians and nurses. The most valuable aspect of running the simulations was getting them to improve as a team.“Just working to get better as a team to best serve these patients,” he said. “As rewarding as I hope it is for the folks that we bring the education to, it's equally rewarding for us to come out here and we see the world from their perspective as limited resources and they do such a fine job. We both take from this relationship.”[email protected]
