Healthcare professionals from all over Southwest Colorado and New Mexico simulated severe medical scenarios on a highly realistic manikin and fostered a medical resource network for rural communities at a symposium in Durango last week.
Urban healthcare providers shared techniques with rural Southwest providers to stabilize and identify high acuity low occurrence events – or HALO events – in a two-day symposium and simulation last week at the Fort Lewis College/University of Colorado Anschutz Nursing Hall.
Some examples of HALO events are emergencies such as postpartum hemorrhages, pediatric crises or complex withdrawal cases. The main categories for HALO events prioritized in the training were obstetric, pediatric, mental health and substance abuse related care.
This event is aimed to give rural providers more confidence in stabilizing HALO events before a patient can be transferred to a specialized facility.
“With HALO events, there could be a little bit of moral injury of like, ‘I don’t know if I’m doing the best job because I’m not an expert in this,’” said Maggie LaRose, RN and FLC director of nursing. “The takeaway was, if you stabilize them, you’re the best thing because most of the time you can’t transfer them until they’re stabilized.”
In the simulation, healthcare providers worked in teams through 10 cases using a pregnant lifelike manikin for “escape room” scenarios that progressed in complexity, said Sara Price, DNP and CU Anschutz director of Midwifery & Women’s Health Services.
The Laerdal manikin, “Mama Anne,” is programmed to display vital signs; it breathes, blinks and even bleeds. A facilitator on the other side of the wall from the simulation hospital room spoke for the manikin to voice symptoms through a connected headset.
In one scenario, the simulation facilitator indicated that Mama Anne had a baby at home and arrived to the hospital with heavy bleeding, back pain and a headache. Providers worked on the manikin, gauging its vitals and symptoms, eventually identifying and treating a postpartum hemorrhage.
Providers addressed postpartum issues like the hemorrhage scenario and even facilitated a complicated birth with the manikin, producing a manikin baby to care for.
The simulation was designed to address cases seen commonly at urban hospitals with specialty stetrics providers, but less frequently at rural facilities, Price said.
After partner clinical facilities expressed a need for professional development opportunities in the area, the idea was born for the FLC/CU Anschutz nursing program to host the simulation/symposium, said Fara Bowler, DNP, CU Anschutz assistant dean of Clinical Simulation Science and senior director of Clinical Partnerships and Placements.
Bowler said this event was a way to “give back to that partnership and make right by that partnership.”
One of the speakers for the symposium, Joe Theine, CEO of Southwest Health System, spoke about the mindset of abundance versus scarcity when it comes to health resources in rural areas.
The speaker discussed how it is easy to think in terms of scarcity when a resource is not immediately available, but it’s important to think of what the area has in terms of abundance.
“The abundance of commitment to community and to one another is almost unending, and if we start from that place of what we do have and how do we build on it, there’s almost nothing we can’t do,” Theine said.
A big component of the symposium was getting healthcare providers together, rural and urban, to share their wealth of knowledge and connect resources of the various Southwest facilities, LaRose said.
Throughout the event, providers from different facilities such as San Juan Regional Medical Center, Indian Health Service and Southwest Memorial Hospital, among many others, shared ideas and contact information.
Colorado Regional Health Connector April Sandman works to connect providers to facilitate a resource network.
“This symposium has really aligned with our mission for training our rural healthcare providers,” she said.
The coordinators for the event will be taking feedback from attendees to improve and hopefully host another one next year, Bowler said. Sandman suggested including a component for cultural awareness training for Indigenous patients.
Beyond the event, attendees are excited to share what they’ve learned with their co-workers.
Dilan Jones and Katherine Brummell from San Juan Regional Medical Center, who described themselves as nurses who are teachers, said the health symposium taught them a lot of better approaches to serve their patients.
“Being in an education role, we took away a lot more knowledge than we came into this with,” Jones said, “I feel like we took away ways we can better teach our employees in emergent situations.”
jrooney@durangoherald.com
