Day 1
This year about a week before Trauma Week was about to start Mrs. McCleery asked the senior biomed class if we were okay with participating in the scenario and getting a LITTLE wet. That being said the scenario this year was an improvised explosive device destination at a concert. The explosive device released chlorine in the surrounding area. Because of this the Hazardous Material(HazMat) team with the fire department was called in. We then walked through what would happen in a mass decontamination (decon) situation. We were cast to act as ambulatory victims of the explosion, so they were going to have us go through like we were getting decontaminated. As the five of us are being walked over to the fire truck we see a sheer wall of water. A tsunami if you will, a colossal 40 psi at 250 gallons per minute. This amount of water that you can see in one of the attached pictures would get us a bit more than a little wet. I might even go as far as to say that it would make our bones wet. Unfortunately, the weather was too cold for the fire department to comfortably allow us to go through and get decontaminated. Aside from us, there was a victim that became immobilized during the explosion and this is the patient that we followed throughout the week. You can see in one of the images where the HazMat crew is dragging her through the decon setup. After the scenario was over we were taken around and shown the different fire trucks and they broke down how they would each be used in a situation like this.
Day 2
On day two we picked the scenario back up where the patient or patients would be getting to the emergency room. We were shown a pop-up mass-decon tent that they would set up in front of the ER if there was a large number of contaminated patients coming to the hospital. We were also walked through some of the initial steps that would be taken in a chemical contact situation such as this one. First, we learned about the urgency of intubation of a patient who has been exposed to dangerous gasses. We were then shown how they treat contamination of their eyes as you can see in the picture provided. When the eyes have been contaminated with toxic material, they will put a lens in the patient's eye that has a tube attached to it. They will then run water through this tube to flush the eyes out. Lastly, we went over the immediate burn care and some of the different causes and solutions of burns.
Day 3
On day three we learned about different types of injuries that can occur to the airway. Some of the major airway injuries included asphyxiants from either carbon dioxide or cyanide, Pulmonary irritants, Edena(swelling), or surfactant loss. These injuries can be identified through symptoms such as coughing, hoarseness, wheezing, wet sounds, and using the shoulders to breathe. It was made apparent the severity of inhalation injuries when we learned that they have a 25% mortality rate.
Day 4
On day 4 a nurse practitioner with the South Alabama burn center came to teach about burns. We learned some general facts about how 68% of burns happen to males and 80% of burns result from a fire or a flame. She commented how she sees a significant number of burns resulting from trash fires. Some of the factors that go into judging the severity of a burn include the source of the burn, degree of heat, length of contact, age of victim, and anatomical location. The thing that I thought to be most interesting was skin graphs. I thought it was neat how they only take a very small layer of your skin and place it wherever it has severe burns. I also thought it was cool if they have to take a thick layer of skin from your thigh to repair your hands, they then have to take a thin layer from somewhere else to put over the thigh.
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