Every year, public safety professionals are called to tens of thousands of incidents in which a person has collapsed due to sudden cardiac arrest. This year alone, more than 350,000 people in the U.S. will be stricken with this leading cause of death. Because a patient’s chance of survival plummets by 10 percent for every minute that effective defibrillation doesn't occur, having an emergency professional on scene with the right training makes a defining difference in a patient’s outcome.
Healthcare professionals, including public safety officers, point out the ability to function as an effective team, along with critical thinking and problem solving, as essential for optimal performance on their jobs. They highlight these skills because they so often perform as teams and must be prepared to make effective decisions under the pressures of a medical emergency.
As a result, the American Red Cross is redesigning its basic life support (BLS) training to incorporate these skills and attributes. The new course, Basic Life Support for Health Care Providers, is consistent with the 2010 International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation Consensus on Science and Treatment Recommendations and the 2010 American Heart Association Guidelines for CPR and ECC.
In addition to meeting these standards, the course now offers students the following four performance elements:
- Critical thinking and problem solving: This course uses real-life scenarios that allow students to hone their critical thinking and problem-solving skills, such as forming a clinical impression and treatment plan, anticipating problems and reacting to changes in patient condition.
- Team dynamics: The course includes team response situations where students practice operating effectively within a team environment improving communication skills with team members, bystanders and other medical personnel. This section also covers areas such as integration with advanced healthcare providers, high-quality CPR and crew resource management.
- Reflection and debriefing: Each response scenario allows individual and group reflection to discuss a student’s ability to think critically and function within a team. This design element is becoming the standard in healthcare learning and development because it leads to improved performance.
- Scientific learning objectives: Students will learn how to recognize life-threatening emergencies; perform a scene size-up and primary assessment; provide ventilations (using a pocket mask and bag valve mask); perform CPR (1-rescuer and 2-rescuer); use an AED; and relieve an obstructed airway for adult, child and infant patients.
The new BLS course provides modularity and flexibility that is unique to the Red Cross. It allows educators and Red Cross training partners the ability to tailor the course to their specific training needs, including the full instructor-led course, a shorter review class for those already certified in BLS and a challenge option for those wishing to receive certification outside a formal class setting. Challenge participants prepare on their own before completing the required written exam and skills assessment in front of a certified Red Cross instructor.
While the Red Cross is emphasizing instructor-led training for firefighters, it now also offers the option of online simulated learning in blended BLS courses. Online simulations test a student’s knowledge and skills using scenarios across a variety of learning objectives and healthcare settings.
The incorporation of simulation learning comes on the heels of a detailed Red Cross assessment of the value that it brings to emergency training. Online simulation learning is evolving in much the same manner as manikin technology moved from basic models into today’s advanced simulation labs.
A Red Cross review of the scientific literature on learning through online simulation found that it provides several key benefits to students. They include the following:
A no-risk experience: Virtual interaction offers a safe environment in which providers can test their knowledge. No-risk environments also allow for unlimited attempts at mastering knowledge and decision-making, which results in greater student confidence. Researchers additionally found that learning is maximized when online training is combined with in-class debriefings with a live instructor.
Real-world scenarios: Simulation learning is effective because virtual scenarios can offer engaging psychological realism, including unpredictability. Studies show that students stimulated by realism retain information more effectively.
A new way to train and practice: Although simulation learning is not intended to be a game, many participants find the aspects incorporating game theory to be engaging and competitive, encouraging them to strive to improve on past performance. Because simulation learning allows students to repeatedly test skills and knowledge at their own pace—anytime and anywhere they have a computer—it increases the retention of knowledge.
Designed around scenarios likely to be encountered by public safety professionals, the program provides learners with a virtual “neighborhood” in which they can click on a number of different locations, such as a mall, school or worksite, where an incident will occur. Each location presents students with an emergency event, or mission, during which they can interactively test their skills for infant, pediatric or adult care.
Each scenario or “mission” begins with an outline of the key concepts that will be covered and a rundown of the skills needed to succeed in that particular mission. The introduction continues with a short animation of the emergency situation and the characters with whom the student will be interacting in this virtual world.
When the animation ends, it’s time to act. It is up to each person to make the right decisions and effectively respond to the emergency using their knowledge. The repetition involved in working a scenario until it is correctly handled fosters procedural memory, which is further reinforced when the student goes into the skills session.
Aristotle, philosophizing nearly 2,300 years ago, captured the essence of what simulation learning brings to today’s emergency training. He wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
With revamped BLS training and multiple ways to learn, the Red Cross continues its commitment to ensuring that public safety professionals have the best science and best practices on their side.
SCOTT C. SOMERS, PhD, EMT-P, is a member of the American Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council. He is a certified emergency paramedic with the Phoenix, AZ, Fire Department and a hazardous materials specialist with FEMA Urban Search and Rescue.
