We plan to travel to Arusha Tanzania, with a team of doctors, residents (like myself), physician assistants, social workers and EMS personnel. There we will carry out education activities with local first responders. Traffic police will receive 12-hours prehospital EMS and mental health training delivered by a team of people including us physicians. This will occur over three days in four-hour sessions. The training program will be consisted of lectures, skills instruction, and a simulated scenario that require basic assessment, hemorrhage control, and spinal immobilization skills. This will allow for additional education for local first responders in the area, to better equip them for everyday situations that may arise in their community.
Tanzania does not have a formalized prehospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) response. Traffic police are usually the first people to arrive at the scene of an accident or injury. Therefore, the Arusha Regional Traffic Police play a crucial role in the emergency response system in the area. Both local first responders, as well as civilians will benefit from this project. The down stream effect of additional education for first responder will carry down to those people they will end up helping with their skill set.
The expected impact will be both professional and personal. The hope is to have lasting impact on the education of the Arusha Regional Traffic police, for which they may take this education and teach future professionals in the area. They may also benefit from the structure of the education and implement that into their current educational process. The impact will hopefully extend to healthcare outcomes, in the number of civilians they will aid in their day to day responses to injuries. The impact will also be personal. I have had an interest in global health throughout medical school, it is part of the reasioon I chose to pursue medicine. Partaking in this opportunity will allow me to better serve future populations, and will allow me to become more culturally competent and congnizant of barriers to patient care.
We traveled to Arusha, Tanzania to teach first responders regarding basic Emergency Medicine concepts including how to stop bleeding, splinting for fractures, C-spine immobilizations, and primary/secondary survey. Arusha does not have a formalized EMS response system, and it is often the firefighters that respond to these events. Our teaching focused on skills they may use within their current system to help save lives. We learned about their system and the challenges they face as well. The students were actively taking notes, asking great questions, and were very engaged in what we were there to educate them on. They expressed immense gratitude and it was amazing to see their improvement throughout the course.
