By Dan Crisler
Omaha World-Herald
OMAHA, Neb. — On a sunny, windy Wednesday, a group of Omaha firefighters gathered in the back of an ambulance outside the Omaha Public Safety Training Center in the Irvington area to treat a patient experiencing chest pains.
The patient and ambulance weren’t real. Instead, they were part of a mobile simulation lab, jointly operated by the Omaha Fire Department and Creighton University , used to train the city’s firefighters to become paramedics — a higher level of first-response medicine than emergency medical technicians. All Omaha firefighters are certified EMTs but not all are certified paramedics.
| MORE: Book Review: Hauntingly real — Medic, a diary
To make that certification easier, the Fire Department and Creighton nursing faculty are bringing the training to the firefighters with the simulation lab on wheels.
“The sim bus allows us to go out into the field and go to different areas of the city,” said Eric Pagnano, a faculty member in the Creighton College of Nursing’s Department of Paramedicine. “Instead of making a crew drive all the way from South Omaha up here into Irvington at the training center, we can go to them, provide an education session and then simulations, hands-on, in their local area.”
Omaha Fire Capt. Nick Charvat, an EMS trainer, said about 670 people have trained in the mobile lab in the year since the University of Nebraska Medical Center donated the lab to the Fire Department. The mobility of the lab allows the Fire Department to have smaller class sizes for more in-depth training in a shorter amount of time compared to fixed location requiring a full training day for multiple firefighting crews.
“It could be a 20- to 30-minute class whereas in previous years, you would be sitting in a classroom for two to three hours getting the same information and the same education,” Charvat said. “It just makes everything a little bit easier for everyone.”
The simulation lab includes two patient treatment areas. One end of the lab is designed to look like the back of an ambulance while the other end is designed to look like a hospital room.
In addition to chest pains, some training scenarios offered through the lab include the mannequins experiencing cardiac arrest, respiratory issues and trauma injuries requiring blood transfusions. Technology — including defibrillators, a monitor that measures a patient’s vitals, a blood pack cooler and a blood warmer — is interspersed throughout the lab.
“(We) basically have unlimited scope as to what we can simulate with these high-fidelity simulators,” Pagnano said.
The “patients” are mannequins who can respond to and interact with paramedics.
“He will breathe. I can tell him to wheeze or cough,” said Sarah Knight, another faculty member in the Creighton College of Nursing’s Department of Paramedicine. “He can give a patient history. He can tell people what’s going on with him.”
“He’s really, really high tech,” Knight added.
Wednesday’s training came as Creighton paramedicine faculty are conducting a yearlong paramedic certification program and ongoing training for Omaha Fire Department EMTs and paramedics with the help of the mobile simulation lab.
© 2026 Omaha World-Herald, Neb.
Visit omaha.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.