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Elizabethtown hospital teaches EMS crews with cadavers

LAKE GEORGE — Local emergency responders got a chance to practice rare, lifesaving techniques on cadavers last weekend, thanks to Elizabethtown Community Hospital.

Many of the EMS crews from Warren and Washington counties attended the event, held in Lake George. It was free because of many grants.

They practiced ways to keep someone breathing, through a needle or tube down the throat, a needle decompression in the chest in the case of a lung collapse, and even by cutting a surgical airway into the throat if all else failed.

The techniques can be done on a mannequin, but it’s very different on plastic, said Bruce Barry, director of the paramedic education program at University of Vermont Health Network.

“It’s not that you can’t do this on plastic. But then you teach them how to save a mannequin, not a person,” he said. “Students end up developing techniques because plastic is less forgiving.”

Students who practice airway tubes on mannequins end up breaking people’s teeth when they have to do it for real, he said.

“They get into this muscle memory. They end up prying on the teeth to open the jaw,” he said. “On real tissue, it’s more forgiving. You can almost do it with two fingers rather than a fist trying to pry.”

The biggest secret about real people: they’re easier.

“Real tissue is very different. It’s actually easier than rubber. Rubber doesn’t flex, doesn’t give,” Barry said.

The surgical airway training was perhaps the most important for emergency responders.

“This is what you do in a last-ditch effort to get them to breathe,” he said.

The responder must cut into the patient’s neck and put a tube through to the airway.

“It’s not a very hard procedure, but it’s a very scary procedure,” he said. “The hardest part is making the decision to do it.”

And that can be harder if the responder has never done it before.

“To feel what it feels like to get through the membrane in the front of the neck, that’s important,” he said.

Elizabethtown Community Hospital’s paramedic program is the only one in New York state that uses donor tissue for training, he said.

The program used two cadavers, provided by the Medical Education & Research Institute of Tennessee. Each body was donated to science for medical education. Trainers were careful to make sure no identifiable features were exposed in photos, and MERI looked through all photos before approving any after the event.

The goal was to be respectful to the body and family members, while allowing providers to learn crucial skills that could save a life.

On the first day of the event, students in Elizabethtown Community Hospital’s paramedic education program spent eight hours practicing their techniques. On the second day, emergency responders from the community were invited to attend, for free, for a four-hour session. On that day, 102 emergency responders attended.

The training attracted about 15% of the active EMS clinicians in Warren, Washington, Essex, Franklin and Clinton counties, Mountain Lakes Regional EMS Council Executive Director Travis Howe said.

He thanked the tissue donors for providing the learning opportunity.

Originally, program organizers had planned to charge community members and use the funds to pay for the event. But three groups offered grants that covered all but $1,000 of the cost, which the hospital covered.

Adirondack Health Institute, Adirondack Rural Health Network and Hudson-Mohawk Area Health Education Center funded the event, which cost $18,000.

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