Alpine Valley Annual Refresher for Outdoor Emergency Care
Fellowship Co-Director, Global Health
On Sunday, Oct 13th the Alpine Valley East Ski Patrol met for their annual Outdoor Emergency Care (OEC) Refresher. The Alpine Valley ski patrol is an all-volunteer organization that renders first aid and transportation to the Alpine Valley ski resort located in White Lake, MI. The patrol is part of the Eastern Michigan Region and Central Division of the National Ski Patrol, a long-standing educational organization that focuses on wilderness first aid education. Every year, ski patrols across the country refresh on one third of the OEC text book, completing a complete refresher every three years.
WSU medical student, Beth Moore, and one of our DMC Emergency Medicine Residents, Mackenzie Burger, assisted in the Triage station at this year's refresher. The station consisted of a discussion session to review START and ID-ME triage systems, Alpine Valley local protocol, and a written case scenario. After the discussion, patrollers were surprised with a triage simulation. The situation was set up in a back room with five moulaged patients and several fog machines to make the environment life-like. Each case was designed to create a teaching point for the patrollers. Patrollers were encouraged to assess each patient, perform any life-saving interventions, and then categorize them per the triage systems. After the triage exercise, we again used the triage systems to discuss how each patient should have been triaged and any life-saving maneuvers that could have been implemented.
The Alpine Valley ski patrol gave extraordinarily positive feedback for this exercise. They felt that the hands-on assessment and interventions gave the discussion a much more grounded framework and they felt they understood the material much more after than hands on portion. The 'patient' volunteers did a fantastic job of acting out their roles and giving the exercise a degree of reality that truly prepared our patrollers for a real-life mass casualty incident.
We want to thank all of the volunteers and especially our WSU SOM and DMC support. More importantly, I want to congratulate WSU SOM medical student Beth Moore who successfully completed her OEC course this year by passing a written and practical test that is offered through the National Ski Patrol. As an Ski Patrol Candidate she will continue to work on skills for snowboarding and toboggan transport and we hope she will become a 'Jacketed Patroller' this winter!
Dr. Kristiana Kaufmann
