The Poet, William Butler Yeats once said: “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a great fire”. As a Casualty Simulation Arts (CSA) instructor my job is not to overwhelm students with profuse moulage knowledge, materials, and methods; but to effectively combine them in targeting their learning modalities to engage it all within their natural creative abilities. Providing empirical, scenario-based CSA training is the underpinning in creating an operational trauma simulation index that delivers high-fidelity realistic results.
A high-quality CSA program stimulates a student’s interest and pro-active participation. Teaching the art of trauma moulage modeling requires frequent hands-on laboratory produced realism that’s distributed throughout lecture and demonstration instruction modules. Students must “see one and do one” with good interactive oversight that contributes to their confidence in skill acquisition and execution proficiency.
I have a responsibility to instruct and prepare students as competent, event-ready moulage artist technicians. They are trained to be efficient, time and cost effective, and moulage specific to the injury roster and case scenario. They can employ high-definition, interactive multi-systems trauma simulations that induce more accurate psychosomatic responses in triage across multiple echelons of care. Their superior CSA acquired knowledge, tools, techniques delivers excellence in their moulage skill platform performance, and with continued work to further refine their proficiency through trauma simulation field work.
Top quality moulage is the pivotal core element of any standardized mass casualty drill or exercise. Engaging with ultra-high fidelity injury renderings stimulates first responder accuracy in symptomatic responses and leads to higher quality performance assessments.
Casualty Simulation Challenges
All forms of CSA education must be tied to accurate physiology in multi-trauma scenarios and based on the use of high-realism materials and methods available today. It must provide multiple interactives capability, and be physically seamless in application to human or mannequin patient role players to achieve authenticated results. Most importantly, it must meet or exceed training goals in support of first responder medical triage readiness and provide a collective of auto-sustainable training assets.
However, many medical first responder personnel find it difficult to acquire or upgrade into higher definition CSA training and product resources due to minimal access and/or funding issues. It’s often compounded with the lack of vision, comprehension, and investment value perceived by their executive chain of command. Those financial decision makers fail to grasp the intrinsic merit in upgrading to superior, hyper-realistic casualty simulation protocols that can elevate their training programs in achieving more superior results.
Consequently, it mounts a challenge to obtain support for improving the overall mission objectives of enhanced, higher quality measurable outcomes. Therefore, field training exercises and mass casualty drills often fall below minimum standards with negligible positive impact to first responder injury recognition and triage speed optimization.
A static level continuum won’t foster performance improvements nor elevate a product knowledge or technique quotient that promotes a superior-quality, realistic educational experience. Efforts to raise the bar and establish higher caliber turn-key CSA platforms are also compounded by training personnel who frequently rotate in and out of casualty simulation related duty positions. These barriers provide little to none in the way of a consistent workforce with auto-sustained training, or continuity in a moulage program left behind for new staff to move forward.
As such, they often end up re-inventing their training baseline benchmarks all over again. Past experiences, and many clinical studies on the outcomes of engaging with higher-definition CSA training scenarios have clearly defined and supported the fact that people learn faster and perform more efficiently when experiencing true-to-life human trauma simulation.
What is real to the eye in a high-value tactical exercise utilizing authentic encounters is far better retained with quicker reaction and better performance in real-time live theaters of operation. Simply put: “realistic wounds equal realistic responses and rapid reactions”.
Training Solutions
Real life medical trauma emergencies are dynamic. Every moment of action counts down in the “Platinum 10 Minute” triage window in rapidly assessing, prioritizing, stabilizing, and packaging critical injury victims for hospital transport. It’s part of the Golden Hour, a timeframe when properly triaged patients have the greatest chance of survival. If the training is accurate to detail in practical performance and delivers a high level of retention, then casualty victims in a real-time trauma incident will have the best chance to remain alive and receive proper treatment.
TraumaSFX ™ sets the ultra-high-definition reality standard for CSA training with over 35 years of combined front-line trauma simulation experience, that includes a staff of combat-experienced medical professionals, SMEs, and Emmy® Award winning/Oscar® nominated experts in casualty simulation special makeup effects. Together they provide an affordable, robust platform of CSA state-of-the art resources in preparing the first contact “care under fire” warfighters, civilian EMS, and medical simulation laboratory techs in all theatres of operation for successful pre-hospital care training outcomes.
Aristotle, the Greek Philosopher once said in 340 BC: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence in training, then, is not an act but a habit.” I would like to bookend that thought with Archilochus, a Greek Soldier, who in 650 BC said: “We do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training”. Throughout the centuries, these training quotes have proven accurate and still serve to epitomize the ongoing need for excellence in training expectations, and the need for execution to the highest level possible in achievements.