Mock DUI demo for high school

[ctemt53740]

My EMS group is planning a DUI demo for the local high school and I am wondering if anybody has experience planning one. I found the Every 15 minutes program procedure manual from the California Highway Patrol but it is more involved than we want. Any advice on how many patients we should have to make it seem realistic? We are unable to have a helicopter land, so all victims of the crash would have to be transported by ground.

 

[DesertMedic66]

My EMS group is planning a DUI demo for the local high school and I am wondering if anybody has experience planning one. I found the Every 15 minutes program procedure manual from the California Highway Patrol but it is more involved than we want. Any advice on how many patients we should have to make it seem realistic? We are unable to have a helicopter land, so all victims of the crash would have to be transported by ground.

It’s going to depend on what your system can handle. Can you take 4 ambulances out of service to transport the patients?

When my high school did it, it was a 2 vehicle head on TC (both cars were actually involved in a TC against each other). We had 1 DOA, 2 critical, 2 moderate, and 1arrested for DUI. They used 1 airship and 2 ground ambulances along with 2 fire engines, 5 police cars, news media, and the coroner. The beauty is that you can scale it to what you can handle without putting the actual 911 system in jeopardy.

If you are going to be using high school students as patients you really need to have their parents sign waivers and get information on them Incase they get injured during the scenario or during transport. That also means you need to get the principal and school board to ok your idea.

If you plan on having them extricated from the vehicle you need to have an in-depth safety meeting so they know what will happen and what they need to do. You will need to talk to the EMS crews and establish what treatments and injuries the students are going to have and to adjust your equipment to match (if someone is going to be intubated you should modify the tube holder and intubation tube so that it does not enter the patients mouth).

Your employees should also be on duty so that they are covered by the companies insurance and workman’s comp if they are injured.

There is a lot of stuff to plan for if you want to do it correctly, legally, and safely. It’s not as easy as “hey bob, go get 2 cars from the junkyard and we will have them crash together”.

Some other things to consider: the size of the school and who your main target is. If you have a school of 5,000 students you are going to have to narrow down the amount of students in order to maintain control of them and for them to actually see. You may also have to adjust the bell schedule for the school so you have time. Having 2 crashed cars in a field provides the benefit of having more students being able to see the process but if you close down the street with police and have the accident actually staged there, it makes it more realistic.

 

[ThadeusJ]

We used to have them but as a "tour" of the Emerg Dept...once they were in the trauma room, the EMS would wheel someone in (one of their classmates who was "sick" that morning for the tour). We would tell the tour to stand in the corner but don't say pr do anything. They would be pretty intent on what we did and when we mentioned his name, they were stunned. I even had a bowl of red liquid hidden on the stretcher and added extra suctioning tubing. Once the MD called the code, we made the reveal and they went off for a debrief.

It was fun to coordinate between EMS and the hospital for the project.

 

[ctemt53740]

Thanks for the replies. Our group is volunteer and we only provide coverage for our town at night so we can use both our ambulances. The fire department is also volunteer based. As of now we are thinking 1 DOA, 1 critical, and 1 that would be arrested, but I am not sure if we should have 2 people in each car giving us 2 criticals instead. I feel like this would have more of an impact. I'm thinking this would require 2 ambulances each with 2 people. As well as an engine and the rescue truck.
The high school has about 1200 students but we want to do it just juniors and seniors. The school has already approved the concept but we haven't discussed details.

 

[DrParasite]

Add a narrator on the PA system, who is explaining what is happening. give them a script so they can explain the DUI. We used to do ours on the football stadium, so we simply put everyone in the stands. make sure the dui and field sobriety test and arrest are done in front of everyone. mulage up the victims if you can, to add to the realism. I always liked having the helicopter land too, they will often do it for free PR. the patient county doesn't matter... you can put both criticals in the ambulance, and once you close the door to "drive to the hospital", you will be fine. you don't need to be that realistic in limiting how many you can put in the ambulance.

One of the biggest headaches is staffing. assuming everyone is a volunteer, make sure you get commitments in advance from people to show up. It can be done, but it is tough to do last minute. If you can't do it solo, ask one of your neighbors if you can borrow their crew for about 2 hours for the drill. When we did it, we had a mutual aid engine company extricating the patient from one car, and our rescue handled the second car.