On a drizzly October day at Petersburg’s dump, LeeAnna Lucas was excited to be playing a victim. She’d heard the day before that the fire department needed someone to pretend to be trapped under a car as part of a high school training exercise.
“And I said ‘Me! Me, me, me!’” Lucas said gleefully.
She wiggled into the upside-down cab of a rusted Dodge pickup. Members of the volunteer fire department had taken it from the dump and stabilized it for the training.
“My ribs hurt! Help me!” Lucas yelled, practicing as she waited for the event to start.
The training was for students taking the high school’s Emergency Trauma Technician course.
Becoming an ETT takes fewer hours of training than becoming an EMT, which means it fits well with a high school class schedule. The course teaches lifesaving skills the students can take anywhere, and at the end of the semester they’ll walk away with their certification.
Fire Captain Devren Bennett was overseeing the event. Firefighters train for auto accidents regularly, but he said this was the first time since he’d joined the department that they’d done it with high school students.
Six high schoolers arrived, decked out in firefighting gear and protective equipment. Bennett gave them a brief rundown.
“We have a small pickup truck that’s been in a rollover accident. We have a victim trapped inside,” he said. “And so we want you to grab the tools that you’ve been trained on grabbing, and go and assess the patient.”
The day before, the students had practiced using the department’s spreading and cutting tools. Now they leapt into action, with firefighters nearby to help if needed..
Some students stayed with the victim, while others began using the equipment to cut parts of the truck. Lucas screamed and cried, but the high schoolers stayed focused – breaking glass and clearing space until they could safely remove her from the pickup.
After the event, Bennet said the students did an incredible job picking up the basics.
“I was really impressed with their communication style,” he said. “There were a couple people who stepped up and really did a good job taking charge, and they worked very well as a team. I was really impressed with that.”
Ryan Gilkey, Petersburg’s emergency medical services coordinator, is an instructor for the course. He said the demo was the perfect way to put what the students have been learning into action.
“We’ve spent the first basically month and a half of this course working through trauma assessments, and the way we’ve tried to do that is learn by doing,” he said.
Gilkey said he wants to show his students there are a lot of different paths in emergency medicine. He’s invited firefighters, doctors, and search-and-rescue professionals to share their experiences with the class.
“They’re all going to get certified with this emergency trauma technician certification, and that’s going to be great, and it will provide opportunities,” he said. “But it was also just an introduction in general to all things emergency medicine.”
Next, he said the class is in the process of becoming CPR certified.
