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Quantico Fire and Emergency Services Paramedics had the opportunity to practice advanced airway management techniques on a cadaver. Airway management is a set of medical procedures performed to prevent airway obstruction and thus ensure an open path between a patient’s lungs and the atmosphere.

Photo by Adele Uphaus-Conner

Quantico paramedics undergo advanced training to become certified Critical Care Paramedics

21 Mar 2016 | Adele Uphaus-Conner Marine Corps Base Quantico

“This is a rare opportunity,” said Quantico Fire and Emergency Services Paramedic Chris Payne. “Most medics don’t ever get a chance to do this in 20-30 years of experience.”

He was talking about the opportunity to practice advanced airway management techniques on a cadaver. Airway management is a set of medical procedures performed to prevent airway obstruction and thus ensure an open path between a patient’s lungs and the atmosphere.

“To get hands-on airway experience when it’s not critical is invaluable,” said Henry Larrick, a paramedic at Dahlgren Naval Base.

Payne and seven other Quantico paramedics, along with Larrick and paramedics from Loudoun County, Manasses, and Winchester, are attending a two-and-a-half-month-long Critical Care Paramedics course. They learned and practiced airway management skills on human cadavers and pig respiratory tracts Mar. 9.

“This course will upgrade their certifications to the highest level,” said Assistant Fire Chief Ulysses Taormino, who brought the course to Marine Corps Base Quantico.

“Basically, they’ll be board-certified paramedics,” said Christina Martinka, a certified flight paramedic and instructor-owner of Air Medical Experts, LLC, the company which provided the training to the Quantico paramedics.

Paramedics and Emergency Management Technicians from Quantico Fire and Emergency Services are the first responders for all medical and fire emergencies aboard Marine Corps Base Quantico and the town of Quantico. Taormina said that over the past 10 years, the Base has taken on a mission to be able to provide Advanced Life Support (ALS) to its constituents rather than only Basic Life Support.

Some components of ALS include tracheal intubation, cardiac defibrillation, IV insertion, needle decompression of a collapsed lung, advanced medication administration and neonatal/pediatric advanced life support.

Taormina said that no other installation has a Critical Care Paramedics program.

The Quantico paramedics participate in the course voluntarily. They meet twice a week and will have completed a total of 120 hours of training when the course ends.

“I wanted to attend to be able to provide better patient care,” Quantico paramedic Rob Stargel said.

“There’s a high volume of special needs children aboard Quantico, too, so this helps us with that,” Payne said.

At the Mar. 9 course, the paramedics had an opportunity to handle pig respiratory tracts. Air Medical Experts instructor Jamie Cooper helped the students locate the various landmarks of the respiratory tract, such as the larynx and trachea, and observed while they practiced tracheal intubation—the placement of a plastic tube into the windpipe to maintain an open airway.

“The number one rule of intubation is to provide oxygenation and ventilation,” Cooper said. He said intubation is a difficult procedure that requires a great deal of practice in order to perfect.

“In three years as a paramedic, I’ve had only one opportunity to intubate a person,” Stargel said.

The students also had the opportunity to practice intubation on a cadaver. Martinka said she asks the labs to send her cadavers that pose the most challenges to paramedics attempting airway management so that they can feel confident in being able to overcome difficulties.

The cadaver that the students worked on had scars on his chest, indicating previous heart surgery, and no teeth, which would make establishing a seal on the patient’s mouth to provide artificial respiration difficult. His build suggested that he may have suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

After intubating the cadaver, the paramedics had a chance to dissect it to see the chest cavity.

“These guys have been awesome,” Martinka said of the paramedics in the course. “They are very engaged and they’re grasping information quickly. It’s nice to see.”

“When they’re finished with this course, there won’t be a patient they shouldn’t be able to help,” Taormina said.

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