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Students preparing for emergency management jobs (Click here) at Penn State now have an advantage over the competition.

The Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center recently purchased LionReach - a vehicle that features state-of-the-art technology for training hospital and other emergency staff - with a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

"The idea was to have a vehicle that we could take from place to place, that we could use to train people on multiple things," LionReach Program Coordinator Nancy Flint told Emergency Management.

One of the highlights of the trailer are the adult, pediatric and newborn-sized Laerdal mannequins meant to facilitate medical training. The mannequins, which can be remotely controlled by an instructor, provide a safe environment for people to practice without training on real patients.

"These things are so sophisticated that they breathe, talk, sweat - we can get fluids to come out of just about any portion of them - and they can be programmed," Flint said, adding that the trailer also has advanced airway heads, which allow trainees to identify alternate ways of airway management on adult and pediatric mannequins.

The medical center also used the grant funding to develop three computer-based preparedness simulations, including one for pandemic flu, one for blast mass casualty, and one for large-scale hospital evacuation.

The simulations are linked through a wireless network that allows for complex decision-making scenarios. The training seminars can be recorded, allowing instructors to show students how they reacted to a situation and provide additional insight.

"Everybody's mutual decisions kind of cascade down and may affect each other," Flint said. "So we're able to teach some of the hospitals to understand that their decisions are sometimes not right or wrong, but there are trade-offs."

LionReach also is outfitted with the materials to teach students about communication technology, such as 800 MHz radios, switching talkgroups, satellites, Webcams and video-conferencing equipment.

The medical center is now hoping to develop agreements with government agencies that would allow LionReach to be used as an incident command center during an emergency. Although the vehicle is not yet licensed for patient care, is has helped the medical center in some situations, such as the H1N1 outbreak.

Labels: Emergency management jobs