Inver Grove Heights Schools' Simley EMS Students Help College Paramedic Students Practice With Staged Disaster

Press release from the Inver Grove Heights Schools:

April 29, 2021

Simley High School’s Emergency Medical Services (EMS) classes routinely do drills to practice their skills in high-stress environments that simulate real life. In past years, EMS students have practiced CPR in the middle of the high school’s foyer to get used to focusing in a chaotic setting. This spring, EMS students played the victims in a large-scale simulation of a mass casualty incident to help paramedic students at Inver Hills Community College practice their skills.

Simley students were put in makeup to simulate different injuries and positioned around a parking lot to mimic a car crash. College students triaged the Simley students, treated their “injuries,” put them on gurneys and in the backs of ambulances, and ran through all of the other tasks they would have to do at the scene of a car crash. Although Simley students were acting as the victims, they left with a better understanding of how medical services work at a large-scale incident, what victims experience, and how different injuries are treated. Participating in the simulation also provided them with first-hand knowledge of the educational opportunities that will be available after they complete their high school EMS courses.

Thank you to Inver Hills for inviting Simley students to participate and learn, and thank you to all of the current and future emergency medical services professionals for their unyielding work to save lives.

This press release was produced by the Inver Grove Heights Schools. The views expressed here are the author’s own.