Training EMTs for “Real-Life” Responses

BY MICHAEL McLELLAND

Emergency medical tech- nicians (EMTs) are assaulted every week. From physical assaults to kidnapping and even carjacking, our emergency medical services (EMS) personnel are placed in situations daily where the only training they can fall back on is their own level of street smarts they brought to the job. A new training system from FAAC Incorporated promises to revolutionize the field of EMT safety.

The MILOResponse Fire/EMS interactive training simulator brings a student as close to reality as possible while still retaining the instructive, professional setting necessary for knowledge transfer. It is a flexible and expandable teaching environment into which a wide range of professional fields can insert their own curricula. Instructors choose scenarios from a video library based on specific training objectives (in the scenario below, situational awareness and threat recognition). Students are presented with a situation that requires them to demonstrate proper judgment and decision-making skills through verbal and physical actions.

FAAC’s analysts and researchers know that students learn from their mistakes. Therefore, the students’ actions during the exercise are recorded, and the instructor can replay them during a critique. Delivering content interactively enables students to see the consequences of their actions immediately. They learn the strategies and tactics to recognize threats and make decisions that will eliminate the potential for harming themselves or their patients.

(1) Photo courtesy of FAAC.

Scenario: Student Brian Jones stands in front of a large 7- × 12-foot video screen showing a “live” scene of a brown apartment building. Jones stands ready as the video takes him inside the building, down a hallway, and through a broken door into the apartment from where the call originated. A woman sits on a couch, crying and holding a towel to her head. The man, smoking and talking to himself, is pacing back and forth in the living room. On the coffee table is a bottle of liquor and some pills. On the side table is a chef’s knife.

What would Jones do? In this example, FAAC’s scenario-based curriculum and the agency’s policies would provide the EMT with strategies, tactics, techniques, and protocols to conduct room analyses, threat recognition, tactical deescalation concepts and applications, and stay/leave decisions, among others.

Classroom scenario: Jones’ actions are observed by the instructor Mary Smith. She has taken her students through the situational awareness curriculum but wants to make sure it gets deeply ingrained in their cognitive processing. EMT assaults are on the rise. Maintaining personal safety is mission-critical to professional performance. The simulation system is the only way her members can “try on” different strategies and tactics to see what works best.

Events unfold quickly, and Jones’ demeanor and verbal exchange with the subject have not satisfied Smith that he is grasping the gravity of the situation. Smith presses a button at the computer, and the man on the screen becomes more agitated, telling Jones to mind his own business and get off his property. Jones rebounds and begins using with the man the verbal deescalation tactics he learned in the class; Smith chooses to have the man comply with Jones’ directions to move into the kitchen and sit down.

At the end of the exercise, Smith takes Jones through a replay of his actions. She points out the good and bad of his decisions. Although he has finished the third and final scenario in this training module, she can see he is disappointed and would like an opportunity to demonstrate improvement. She puts him back in front of the screen.

Smith loads another, slightly different, scenario from the menu. Now that Jones has seen the first scenario, Smith wants to make sure his interaction comes from the application of his knowledge and not simply from learning the techniques for that specific scenario.

FAAC’s MILOResponse system has the beneficial ability to link with other related training content. Related training topics can be added to the front or back of this system of the training exercise and create compound, multilayered instructional opportunities. An example would be integrating a driving simulation component into the beginning of the training event and then adding segments involving patient transport and medical after the subject interaction lesson.

Technology continues to push the outer limits of the training paradigm. Now, FAAC has crafted a simulation system agencies can use to create training content that puts students at the very edge of reality and allows them to go “hands on” and try different tactics and techniques they will need to use in the field. Extended time in a real-life, on-the-fly simulation exercise equals a more knowledgeable student, which means a better prepared professional to safely handle the daily rigors and nontraditional reactions necessary in today’s EMS.

MICHAEL McLELLAND is a curriculum developer for FAAC Incorporated and has designed several driver training programs for large urban fire departments.