UM to Host Sports Medicine Crisis Training at Grizzly Stadium

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - On Wednesday, the University of Montana’s College of Health will host sports injury training inside Washington Grizzly Stadium on scenarios to provide healthcare students with realistic situations that might actually occur during a sporting event.

I spoke this week with Kerry Haney, UM Pharmacy School Faculty for the Family Residency Program at the University of Montana about the training.

UM's Largest Sports Medicine Training Event will be Wednesday

“We are having a ‘game day’ simulation training event,” began Haney. “That's an inter-professional education experience for students in the Masters of Athletic Training Paramedicine in the family medicine residency, and we are going to be working on mock scenarios that they may encounter during a large collegiate game day event.”

Haney said the actual scenarios cannot be made public in advance so that students will have the opportunity to diagnose and treat the injuries as they occur in a game-day situation.

Some of the Training Scenarios are Described Below

“One will be a spinal cord injury on the field with an athlete,” she said. “Another one is heat-related illness. I know it's supposed to be in the 40s on Wednesday when we're doing this but still, managing heat-related illness will be very important for all of those students and learners. In addition, we will have a spectator who has a cardiac event in the stands.”

Haney explains why this training is so vital to all the sports medicine students.

“The most important thing that we work on is having our students get experience on teams with different health professionals; learn how to communicate with each other across their disciplines and coordinate their teams effectively in the care of patients,” she said. “This is something that is pretty unique to this training. They don't get to practice that all the time through regular classroom activities, and so this event is a unique experience for them to really work on their team skills and get to know each other better as professionals.”

Haney said even as an educator, she has learned much just by organizing this first-ever event at the stadium.

“I think I've learned a lot by working to help organize this event as to how many people are actually involved and the training that they must have in order to manage all of these urgent and emergent kinds of situations that can happen really out of the blue,” she said.

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The Training will Feature Sights and Sounds Similar to a Game Atmosphere

In addition, an emergency room scenario will be run on the field by Simulation in Motion, a Montana-based mobile program that will use specially equipped sound trucks.

The training scenarios will be from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday on the field at Washington Grizzly Stadium.