PARAMEDIC students at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Port Macquarie will receive the most realistic training possible with the arrival of a simulator ambulance (SimAmbulance) to prepare them for real-world emergencies.
The SimAmbulance allows paramedic students to experience all aspects of treating patients in an Emergency Response Vehicle, including loading stretchers, drawing up medications, monitoring ECG charts, and doing CPR in a moving vehicle.
Joe Acker, senior lecturer in paramedicine at the CSU School of Biomedical Sciences in Port Macquarie, said the SimAmbulance gave the university the opportunity to train paramedic students in an authentic environment very similar to what they would work in when they graduate.
“By recycling a 1996 Victorian ambulance, funded by the Hunter and Coast Interdisciplinary Clinical Training Network (ICTN), we created this simulator for less than $30,000, whereas other units in Australia cost more than $100,000,” he said.
“The mobile simulator enables us to go into parts of the community including local parks, the beach, shopping malls, and public areas to create authentic learning environments that include bystanders and the sounds and atmosphere of doing patient care in the view of the public.
“The SimAmbulance will also be taken to schools, career fairs, and public presentations to introduce future students to studying paramedicine at Charles Sturt University.”
Mr Acker noted that there were very few mobile ambulance simulators available for paramedic student training in Australia.
Second-year CSU paramedic student Helen Atkins said the logistics of working as a co-ordinated team within the clinical environment of an ambulance could be hard to capture within a classroom.
“Charles Sturt University has taken paramedic students out of the classroom and onto the road with the SimAmbulance,” she said.
“It provides a wonderful opportunity to acquire clinical skills in an environment which we will need to become very familiar with.
“I offer a heartfelt thank you to Hunter and Coast Interdisciplinary Clinical Training Network for their support and for the SimAmbulance.”
Mr Acker noted that paramedics received special driver training when they are employed by ambulance services, and students at the university are only taught the legal responsibilities of operating emergency vehicles.
“In NSW there is a requirement for candidates who apply for paramedic jobs to have a medium-rigid licence,” he said.
“This isn’t required to operate a standard van-style ambulance, but it is needed for the heavier rescue vehicles, buses, and other equipment.”
