I am the newely elected Medical Team Leader for my counties SAR Team. We like to run training drills now and again; ropes, search, swiftwater, dive, etc... Whenever we do so we are expected to run a full medical drill on the pateint as well (great practice for the newbies). The next drill is next month. The Rope Rescue Team Leader is going to run some type of low angle rope rescue call to get the newbies involved. She would like me to organize some type of medical assessment and training that the newbies will do (mostly First Aiders and some Ski Patrolers and First Responders) She is keeping the details of the rescue scenerio under wraps, but wants me to come up with some good injuries that need addressing. We will be "rescueing" several people. Any suggestions on cool injuries and complications I should throw at them?
AS I PROMISED:
Thanks for the input from you all. The drill was scheduled for 2 weeks ago but got moved to this last Saturday. We ran it like a real call. Got paged out in the mornig to respond to the Cache, got briefed by the Deputy (who by Law is our IC, appointed a Operations person, fired up the vehicles and responded. As Medical Team Leader I was put in charge of the medical aspect of it all, but the organizers of this drill decided to keep me out of the loop on the exact call type, since part of teh call meant that I also got to "run" the medical aspect w/o any fore knowledge. So while all your suggestions were appreciated, I didn;t get to set up injuries on this one, but I'll keep them in mind for the next one I get to set up, maybe in a month or so.
CALL: 3 ATVers go onto provate property and go off an embankement. None injury per dipatch, but they are unable to get out on their own. We respond with 4 vehicles, 11 team members, the 4 quads, and out full compliment of tech and medical gear. Ops sends out 2 ATvers (one first Aid and one paramedic intern) to scout it out. They find 2 victims on the backside of the property and the intern scrambles down the 70-80 foot embankment to assess the injuries. One tib-fib fx and one rad-ulna fx. Everything else was normal on those two, other than the MOI of crashing an ATV. (It was set up that way because they wanted the focus on this part of teh drill to be proper ropes techniques.) Scouts requested rope gear, rescuers, BLS bag, two baskets, and two sets of c-spine gear (largely becasue of the MOI - something that was debated latter... in the wilderness setting, without any neck pain, neck cleared by Medics, should the arm injury have been boarded?). The third victim was reported to have eandered away from the scene. 2 searchers are sent out to try and track that girl while the rest of us get into the scene for the two located victims and begin seting up the ropes. The BLS bag gets sent down and the Paramedic Intern, a OEC certified Ski Patroller, and a First Aider begin c-spining and splinting the patients. Meanwhile, the search team locates the wandering victim. She is alert but very disoriented (A+0x1). She knows her name but not much else. Seeing as how our team for this call was largly First Aiders, I headed out to met the search team and evaluate for myself. She has a mild head laceration, but not much else going on. She is altered, complaining of head pain, but after a rapid trauma assessment is found to have no other significant injury. Considering our undermanned staus, I make teh call to bandage the wounds at scene, monitor vitals, and transpoirt by ATV wagon to the "trailhead" for the waiting Ambulance. Within 15 minutes we have transfered the patient and are available to assist with the ropes. First Patient is braught up and two of us (Paramedic and me) take over patinet care up top, transfer him to the wating ATV and get him to the waiting ambulance. The rappeling team was dead tired, so I was sent down to replace them for the last patient. I disagreed with boarding him, but once the Intern made the call, we went with it. From onscene to end of call: 2 hours, not bad for a wilderness rescue.
We had several people as observers there with cameras to document for latter analysis. We also had a Fire Instructor/FEMA USAR guy there to evaluate us. We did a lot of things right, and somethings taht we could improve on. From a medical standpoint there were no glaring issues, other than a debate over c-spine. I (and several other Paramedics) say that if their is not pain/deformity that we don't. The other issue for us was that the BLS bags need some major restocking as the bandages are getting sparse and out normal backboards (Millar Boards for Water Rescue) need to be augmented with regualr boards (something I have advocated for a while and we will probably barrow from the county ambulance). GOOD DRILL. I have some pics, but have yet to load them up. Once I do I will repost so that you can check them out.
THANX ALL.