By Margaret O’Hara
The Santa Fe New Mexican
SANTA FE, N.M. — Stan D. Ardman II was in a sorry state.
The 33-year-old lay in a hospital bed. A cocktail of intravenous medications entered his body through IV lines in his right arm while a bag full of fresh blood, hanging from a nearby pole, transfused into the veins of his left arm. A ventilator pumped air into his lungs with a rhythmic whooshing.
Though he can do most things a human can do — he bleeds, cries, drools and urinates; his pupils can dilate and his heartbeat can quicken; his lungs and bowels make the usual noises — Ardman isn’t a real person. His medications and blood are mock versions of the real thing.
Ardman is an advanced, articulable manikin, one of several inside Santa Fe Community College’s Medical Simulation Lab. It’s designed for the college’s respiratory care, phlebotomy, nursing and emergency medical services students — as well as local health care providers — to practice their craft without real patients.
Starting in June, the medical simulation lab will be home to a new program certifying students in critical care paramedicine.
The semester-long course is designed to teach experienced paramedics and nurses the specialized skills they need to move someone like Ardman — a patient receiving intensive medical care — safely, said Drew Congdon, director of SFCC’s Emergency Medical Services Institute.
The hope is to generate a new crop of trained professionals who can transport patients in critical condition by ambulance or helicopter without disrupting care — an important skill set in a state where specialty medical services are largely concentrated in a single city.
Students will learn, Congdon said, “to take the ICU and put it in an ambulance or a helicopter or an airplane and send it down the road or through the air — and then manage those patients in a really uncontrolled environment.”
Consider Stan D. Ardman II: Connected to a ventilator and various intravenous drips, he’s a “very standard” intensive care unit patient, Congdon said.
But imagine having to move Ardman and all of his equipment, without halting the flow of air, medication or fluids.
Imagine moving Ardman on a dark night — over icy roads or through turbulent skies — without backup from hospital staff.
That’s what critical care paramedics are trained to do.
SFCC’s new program, Congdon said, will expand on the college’s associate degree in paramedicine and experience in the field, providing additional training in advanced pharmacology, anesthesia, radiographic imaging and more to ensure they can transport patients safely and without much help.
“The takeaway is just being able to manage very critical patients that require high-acuity care — because managing them in transport, that can be a very difficult feat,” said Andrew French, an aeromedical physician assistant and one of the course’s adjunct professors.
There’s a unique need for critical care paramedics in New Mexico, Congdon said: Specialized medical care in the state is often exclusively available in Albuquerque, meaning ailing residents of the rest of the state often have to be moved to receive the care they need.
Transporting those patients often falls on paramedics, many of whom don’t have the advanced training or specialized equipment to continue care from the inside of a helicopter or ambulance, Congdon said.
“At the college, we really wanted to respond to that and provide some advanced-level training to not only our local paramedics but opening it up to anyone in the state,” he said.
And at SFCC, critical care paramedicine students will get to apply their learning in the medical simulation lab.
Michael Tewart, the college’s medical simulation technician, can whip up all sorts of medical simulations, concocting mock medications and rolling out false pregnant bellies, imitation limbs and infant and pediatric “patients.”
Hyperrealistic manikins like Ardman ensure students can learn exactly what it feels like to administer this level of medical care, down to removing the cover from a needle or popping the cap off a vial of medication — without a human subject.
“Most of the things that we can do on a person, he can do,” Tewart said of Ardman.
Meanwhile, from the simulation lab’s control room — separated from students and their patients by a two-way mirror — instructors can monitor students’ performance down to minute details like the proper placement of an IV.
The medical simulation lab will prove an appropriate training ground to ensure the college’s critical care paramedicine students get the extra instruction they need, Congdon said.
“It’s a lot of knowledge. It’s a big jump from your paramedic graduate to critical care,” he said.
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