By Lauren Whetzel
The York Dispatch
YORK, Pa. — Simple tasks like reading and writing are more complicated when they’re done in the back of a moving ambulance.
But when the task at hand includes inserting a breathing tube or IV in a patient, the pressure is on, and the work environment becomes more stressful, said Brett Rosen, first-year medical resident with York Hospital’s three-year emergency medicine residency program.
More than a dozen first-year residents and senior medical students participated in WellSpan’s fifth annual Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Skills Day Wednesday at the York County Fire School on Emig Road.
The eight-hour day provided training for individuals with medical degrees who eventually plan to work in the emergency room.
Throughout the day, the future ER doctors played the roles of emergency medical technicians in the back of a moving ambulance, worked with “patients” who were exposed to chemicals and biological agents, and met with a medevac helicopter crew, said Dr. Daniel Bledsoe, a director of pre-hospital care and disaster medicine at York Hospital.
The challenge: Emergency room doctors face unique challenges because they must try to understand exactly what happened to their patients before they arrived in the hospital.
By learning what happens to a patient before his or her arrival at the ER, doctors are better able to care for the patient, said Bledsoe.
Rosen, 25, said he’s accustomed to performing medical tasks in a hospital setting while standing and supplied with backup equipment and manpower if it’s required.
“In the back of the ambulance, what you have (inside the vehicle) is what you’ve got,” said Rosen, explaining the different type of challenge he experienced while caring for a patient while in motion and sitting down.
EMT’s viewpoint: Emergency medical technician Brian Tancraitor, 26, enjoyed driving the ambulance as a handful of future ER doctors attempted to insert a breathing tube into a mannequin.
After completing the skills day, the medical residents gain a new level of respect for medical technicians and realize working out of the back of
an ambulance is a whole new ballgame, said Tancraitor.
“I could hear the (medical residents) getting frustrated while trying to intubate a patient in the back of the ambulance; they kept saying, ‘We know you’re swerving and hitting potholes on purpose,’” he said.
When technicians are en route to the hospital with patients, it’s very common for doctors to come over the radios demanding patient information that is irrelevant at the time of an emergency situation, he said.
“They tend to expect more out of us than we can handle ... skills day allows future ER doctors to experience what we (technicians) do and see how hard it is not to have nurses to get us what we need on site of the accident,” he added.
Copyright 2011 York Newspapers, Inc.
All Rights Reserved