Introducing the Indoor Ambulance

     Mike Preston knows what EMS providers want from an ambulance. After all, he sold them for 20 years. Now, the company he founded, Rescue Safety Products, based in Denton, TX, has brought that expertise to the classroom with the Classroom Ambulance Simulator. Trainees no longer have to jockey for position huddled around the back door of an ambulance in the cold and rain. Preston has brought the unit right inside the classroom.

     "I didn't do it alone," Preston says. "I talked to everybody--guys who'd been in the business since its infancy and helped develop the KKK specs: 'How should it look? What should it have?'"

     The design went through numerous drafts, with Preston reevaluating each time, asking paramedics and EMTs, 'How can I improve this? How does this need to change?'"

     Finally, based on crucial feedback and the "bits and pieces" he'd been filing away since 1986, when he first got into the ambulance business, he's produced something that takes training to the next level.

     The resulting Classroom Ambulance Simulator starts at around $23,000 and is built to the same specifications as a mobile intensive care unit (MICU), including cot, suction and oxygen hookups, equipment and supplies storage, attendant's seat, squad bench and electrical outlets. Entry is from the rear of the unit, and one side is cut out to create a view of the inside from the classroom.

     The simulator can be customized with a range of options, including a package with a Simulaids manikin. The fully loaded ALS model comes with logos, radio, 12-lead, cabinetry, backboard storage and three tiny cameras that feed to a big-screen TV for multi-angled viewing of the interior. Expect to pay several thousand more for this version. Delivery is always included, says Preston, as well as the two-day set-up.

     The unit was nearly five years in the making from concept to reality, according to the colorful Texan, who says market research was conducted early on to see if there were enough schools to support the demand. "I didn't want to go out and make a 500-lb. cake if there was only gonna be one party of two people," he says.

     Turns out the party was bigger than that. The simulator debuted at the National Association of EMS Educators (NAEMSE) show in San Antonio, TX, in September, where it drew a crowd four-deep, according to Preston. And it may soon be the new standard in classroom education.

     "I'm busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest," Preston claims, as his orders, mainly from community colleges, roll in.

     One grateful customer is educator Bruce Walz, PhD, NREMT-P, associate professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Health Services at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. His department's simulator was donated by the Board of Visitors for the R Adam Crowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, MD. "It's especially helpful with new EMTs," says Walz, though he's also found paramedics practicing in it on their own time. "We can teach not only how to function in the back of an ambulance but what I call 'environmental management'--how to load the cot, where to put equipment as you're using it, where to sit in relation to the patient--all the little nuances that you wouldn't normally learn until your field internship. Now, not only are students learning proper technique--manipulating the manikin to place an intubation tube, for instance, but things like where to put the tubing; and when they take out the laryngoscope, where to lay it down. Things that didn't matter to them...in the classroom."

     Walz says in one semester the Classroom Ambulance Simulator has become an invaluable teaching tool, providing an important new step between introducing a skill in the classroom and performing it on a patient in a moving vehicle.

     Raphael Barishansky, executive director of the Hudson Valley (NM) Regional EMS Council and a member of EMS Magazine's editorial advisory board, agrees that the simulator was a long time in coming.

     "I wish it had been around when I was doing my training," he says. "There's a big gap between the classroom and the street, and this can help bridge that gap. It's light years ahead of driving around a parking lot for an hour or two in the back of an ambulance."

     For more, visit www.ambulancesimulator.com.