OhioHealth Doctors Hospital Continues Partnership with Prairie Township Fire Department To Improve Patient Care
The OhioHealth Doctors Hospital residency program has had strong relationships with community partners for many years, Prairie Township Fire Department being one of them.
Through the residency programs, there is a big focus on EMS and interest in EMS trainings from residents, which has led to the creation of a one-year Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) program for physicians interested in the ever-changing field of EMS Medicine, called OhioHealth Doctors Hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Fellowship. OhioHealth trains fellows in the field working with some of Columbus’ best paramedics where they will gain EMS experience with administration, ground, critical care, and aeromedical transport.
Only approximately three in 10 EMS residencies nationally have an EMS fellowship program.
While focusing on the importance of collaboration, Doctors Hospital and the Prairie Township Fire have hosted yearly EMS continuous education conferences. The education series consist of different exercises, including communication training for the residents and EMS crews to be on the same page when caring for a patient or patients. OhioHealth physicians also offer monthly trainings at the fire station.
“It is wonderful for our crew to actually see what the perspective is from the hospital, what the latest and greatest is, but also just names and faces so it’s a familiar face when we go in there and hand off a patient,” Dan Ellinger, Prairie Township Fire Captain said.
“It’s really just fostering that relationship because we see them often like we’re here working with them and I’ve seen all of their faces, I know their names because they are always coming into our ER,” Courtney Cox, DO, Doctors Hospital Emergency Medicine Chief Resident said, “We’re all a part of the community, we’re bettering this for the patients.”
Once a year, Prairie Township Fire and Doctors Hospital residents also participate in a joint EMS field experience training. The field experience training either is a cold-water rescue, or an event called “Residency Extrication Day.”
Residency Extrication Day is day consisting of residents working alongside fire officials to learn and experience real life situations that could happen out in the field. The residents will go through four stations, including pre-hospital vascular access, fire/rescue tasks in firefighter gear, use of the jaws of life and procedure sin a medical moving ambulance.
“We have four stations set up going through our cardiac arrest protocol, we have them go through in the back of a medic, try to start IVs, intubate, do some other procedures just to get an idea of the tight spaces and when you’re moving in an actual moving vehicle and how different it is than that nice, isolated ED where you have a clean trauma room, trauma bay trying to work,” Captain Ellinger said, “It gives them a different perspective.”
“We always see the patients when they come into the ER, but I don’t think we fully understand the breath of how much goes on pre-hospital,” Cox said, “So it’s been awesome to be in their shoes and see what all happens with the patients before they arrive to our ER.”
Captain Ellinger said it’s not just dropping off a patient and leaving, it’s the medical staff at the hospital and fire officials truly getting to know one another and building trust between the departments.
“When they come over to the hospitals, it’s not just we drop off a patient and they wonder why we didn’t do something or how something didn’t get done,” Captain Ellinger said, “We have protocols that we say we do certain things in certain situations and well sometimes we have to deviate from those.”
This day is about respecting one another’s role that is played in caring for someone or people in the community who need medical attention.
“I have so much respect for our firefighters, our paramedics because it’s just an incredible amount of weight and stress, but also the mental aspect of like you’re going up there to save people,” Cox said, “We had so much gear on, we’re sweating and huffing and puffing up the stairs, but ultimately somebody has to do it and I really respect that they do that.”
Photo courtesy: OhioHealth
