mobey Posted February 13, 2012 Posted February 13, 2012 So I aquired a couple pigs legs from the local butcher and practiced IO's last week. It was a great experience for the EMT's here to see them in action first hand in real bone, as well as a good refresher for me. Anyone else have lab ideas that utilize this same type of realism?
akflightmedic Posted February 13, 2012 Posted February 13, 2012 Get some guzzles or is it goozles from the butcher and practice surgical crics. Pig airways are cool....
DFIB Posted February 13, 2012 Posted February 13, 2012 (edited) We do not have a simulator for injuries so for my EMT class we brought in a shoat and after anesthesia we practice bleeding control, tracheotomies, cricothyrotomy, evisceration, sucking chest wound and end in an open femoral laceration so that our students can see what those lesions look like as well as the treatment. You can buy pig trachea if you have access to the slaughter house. I slaughter a couple of pigs per year for food and practice tracheotomies and crics on the cadavers. edited . I did not notice AK had already posted about the goozles. Edited February 13, 2012 by DFIB
JPINFV Posted February 13, 2012 Posted February 13, 2012 At my school we are testing on patient assessments using standardized patients and learn suturing on pigs feet.
paramedicmike Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 At my school we are testing on patient assessments using standardized patients and learn suturing on pigs feet. This is what we do, too. We also have had pig tracheas for cric practice. Some of the new SIMman (also woman, ped and infant/neo) are pretty good, too. Granted, they cost a ton of money and can be limited in availability. If you can get into a place that uses them, though, it could be worth your while.
chbare Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 (edited) We also use porcine based labs. Particularly, hearts and lungs for our heart/lung labs. In addition, I was recently able to procure a television, microscope and a flex camera and have integrated formal histology labs into my teaching along with a tonicity lab where I have a student draw my blood and citrate it. Then, we take various samples under microscopy and add solutions of various tonicity and appreciate the results as you can easily view the red blood cells. It's a pretty standard first semester anatomy and physiology lab exercise, but a novelty for AEMT students. I also managed with much smooth talking and pestering to procure (borrow from a university chemical stockroom) gas emission tubes and spectroscopes. This has enabled me to integrate formal spectroscopy labs into a survey physics class that I teach. So far, I have been sticking with Hydrogen because the math can be reduced to a simple Rh/n(2) for calculating energy levels. Baby steps, I keep telling myself. We also use the standard sim man, chicken legs for IO and I use racks of ribs, inflated balloons covered in tape and an anatomical skeleton model for realistic pleural decompression. Moulage is fairly simple as well. Fake blood and cottage cheese can work wonders. Also, coffee grounds mixed with conductive gel makes for a great prop. I have even managed to attach large syringes to endo-tracheal tubes after intubating airway mannequins. The syringes were filled with foaming hand cleaner and roughly approximated excessive secretions. Edit: -Rh/n(2). Edited February 14, 2012 by chbare
systemet Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 We learned to suture on pieces of chicken. Also used them for IOs. When I was working as a medic we were lucky enough to get to do cadaver lab, and practice surgical cric's, both using a scalpel and Seldinger technique commerical kits. I've seen the RTs do some cool stuff with pig lungs hooked up to a ventilator. I think they caused some sort of injury that depleted the surfactant then replaced it, and looked at pulmonary hysteresis. It looked pretty cool. I got lucky enough to go to a facility that was doing large animal resuscitation and cardiac transplantation research and see them open the chest of an anesthetised pig, watch and feel as the right heart distended post-arrest, and feel the myocardium harden as calcium entered. Watched them defibrillate it, and saw how dyskinetic the post-resus contractions were. They had an art line in place, and drew serial ABGs too, which was cool, really cool. If you had access to some reagents, you could try isolating cardiomyocytes from a freshly-butchered heart. But this is a pain, and take a couple of hours, and has a high failure rate.
Kiwiology Posted February 14, 2012 Posted February 14, 2012 But this is a pain, and take a couple of hours, and has a high failure rate. Sounds like my last shag 1
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