SIM-NE marks 5 years bringing vital training to Nebraska

UNMC’s SIM-NE program is on a run.

For the past five years, that’s where the mobile simulation training program is typically found — out on a training run to spread vital emergency response and health care skills around Nebraska.

The program marked five years in operation Aug. 2 — a period that has seen steady expansion of its reach in the people it is training and the places it has gone.

Doug Dekker, SIM-NE program manager

Doug Dekker, program manager for SIM-NE, said the program has expanded beyond its core of training critical access hospitals and emergency responders who staff ambulances. Now the trainees include school staff and law enforcement getting trained to use automated external defibrillators and more.

Said Dekker, "I'm impressed with the fact that the program has gone in directions we just never really expected when it first came to be. I'm very proud and impressed with the types of things that we're able to help with when it comes to health care outside of traditional providers."

Initially funded through a Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust grant, the program has continued with its goal of providing training at no or low cost.

Here is a snapshot of Simulation in Motion-Nebraska:

The SIM-NE trucks are stationed at the UNMC Omaha campus, Norfolk, Kearney and Scottsbluff.

• SIM-NE has four signature blue trucks stationed at the UNMC Omaha campus, Norfolk, Kearney and Scottsbluff. Each 44-foot-long, dual axle truck has slide-out room extensions, a simulated emergency room in the front, simulation control room in the middle and ambulance module at the rear. They come with four human patient simulators — two adults and two children — that can talk, breath, bleed or even simulate a pregnancy.

Responders with Sutherland fire and rescue get trained in a SIM-NE simulator.

• The simulators have logged more than 85,000 miles of travel, are approaching 10,000 registered learners, traveled to more than 500 onsite training sessions and trained in 89 of Nebraska’s 93 counties. Read about SIM-NE's 500th onsite training milestone.
• Their high-fidelity simulation training started in critical access hospitals and rural emergency medical services – and that remains the foundation for SIM-NE’s training. The training offerings have expanded to K-12 education health and emergency response teams, typically for asthma attacks or adult cardiac arrest; the Air and National Guard; and statewide law enforcement for automated external defibrillator use. SIM-NE now provides some virtual training options, an advent of the early pandemic; has held some pre-licensure training events with nursing and emergency medical students; participated in disaster drills; and joined training events with the UNMC Emergency Medicine Residency Program.  Learn more about SIM-NE, including events and scheduling training, at the program's website.

Baby boy Raiden, delivered by the newly trained Hildreth Fire and Rescue unit, with parents Kevin Gregory and Jasmine Gutschow of Franklin, Nebraska.

• The simulations have turned into real-life scenarios that put the training into practice. In one case, a school staff member suffered a cardiac arrest in school just a month after SIM-NE cardiac emergency simulation training. The trained responders saved the man’s life. Last fall outside Hildreth, Nebraska, the local fire and rescue responders delivered a baby in a roadside ambulance less than 48 hours after receiving SIM-NE’s emergency obstetrics simulation training. Read about the Hildreth emergency response team's excellent timing.

Dekker said the SIM-NE staff has been on a grand adventure to deliver training across the state. It has been an honor to work with Nebraska’s health care providers and first responders, he said.

"The experience and dedication that we see every time we go out on a training has just been very impressive," Dekker said. "We are so blessed to have the experienced, knowledgeable, hard-working volunteers and other health care providers in this state to keep us all safe and healthy."

Officials with the Nehawka rescue service had a special cake made by Cake Creations Omaha of Murray, Nebraska, when SIM-NE came for training on the day after its 5-year anniversary.