John Abbott College gets new tool for paramedic care program

In John Abbott College’s paramedic care program, even the mannequins are given names.

“This one is Tough Kelly,” first-year student Gabrielle Zsombor-Murray grinned as she struggled with one during an end-of-term practical exam.

The names help identify the mannequins and also add a bit of realism to the training.

Zsombor-Murray has already seen real-life casualties, though. She recently spent a shift observing paramedics in the back of an ambulance as they cared for a crash victim on Highway 40.

“We had a firefighter with us helping out,” she said. “The patient was on a stretcher and we had to rotate him if he vomited or something like that.”

So she appreciates the realism in the training at the school — especially on how to move patients. Now she and just over 100 other trainees at the college have something else to help them practice: an ambulance.

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“We got it mid-October,” program chair Martin Poirier told Global News, “and it’s been in use since then for all our practical sessions.”

It’s the second ambulance in the programme and it replaces an older vehicle. This newer one was donated by the Montérégie ambulance technicians co-operative because it had reached the end of its service life at 200,000 kilometres.

“It’s about three or five years of existence on the road,” the group’s spokesperson Alexandre Barbeau explained.

With this newer truck, students say they now have more opportunities to learn.

“It’s very helpful to have something like this to practice,” Zsombor-Murray said. “It’s the exact same — pretty much what you’re going to find on the road.”

Practice includes driving the ambulance, Poirier said, and students take an emergency driving course in their sixth semester. Also, part of the three-year training has students work on mock shifts where they are expected to respond to simulated emergencies on campus, using the ambulance, according to teacher Fernando Afonso.

“So the students at that time, they function as a real team, and so the students are driving the vehicle,” Afonso said.

Zsombor-Murray wonders how she’ll do as a paramedic, when there’s a person in her stretcher and not a mannequin. She believes the realism in her training will boost her confidence.