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St. Luke’s sim lab prepares a growing number of first responders and the community for live emergencies
Cris Collingwood//April 29, 2022
St. Luke’s sim lab prepares a growing number of first responders and the community for live emergencies
Cris Collingwood//April 29, 2022//
The Allentown Police Department has been using the St. Luke’s University Health Network’s Simulation Center to prepare officers to respond to emergencies.
The work between the Sim Center and the Allentown Police Department has been a “godsend for us,” said APD Sergeant Chris Hendricks, a trained paramedic who leads the department’s ODT-5, or Officer Down Training (First Five Minutes).
The Sim Center has been able “to help us put these officers in scenarios that are as close as they can possibly be to real life, like a situation where an officer has been shot and is bleeding to death right in front of you,” Hendricks said.
By allowing the officers to experience high levels of stress through intense simulations, they will be better able to handle any number of crisis situations, he said.
St. Luke’s Sim Center is based at St. Luke’s University Hospital in Bethlehem, where it designs and produces a variety of simulation materials and models, called task trainers, and provides training sessions for organizations inside and outside the network.
These partners include groups as small as a local Boy Scout troop and as large as divisions of the military and Homeland Security, said Megan Augustine, director of St. Luke’s Network Simulation Center and 3D Print & Innovation Lab.
St. Luke’s Simulation Center’s use has grown since its inaugural year in 2014 when roughly 4,600 learners passed through. By 2021, that number grew to 15,000 learners.
Custom task trainers allow Augustine’s staff to conduct basic first aid programs – such as wound care – with student groups. “And we regularly participate in mass casualty drills where we use real people, simulating real injuries and real responses to those injuries,” Augustine said.
