Ozarks Tech adds ambulance simulator to train EMTs, paramedics

Aaron Light: College uses ambulance simulators to train EMTs.

Ozarks Technical Community College is adding another ambulance simulator to its training arsenal, citing high demand for paramedicine programs.

The college board of trustees voted Jan. 14 to purchase the $73,570 stationary ambulance simulator from Simulator Solutions LLC in Texas, the lowest qualified bidder. It will be used by the Alliance for Healthcare Education, which is located on the Cox North campus.

The alliance is a partnership to train health care workers between Ozarks Tech, Springfield Public Schools, Missouri State University and CoxHealth.

Aaron Light, provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the simulator creates a valuable, realistic laboratory for students to practice required skills.

Using a mannequin and the ambulance simulator, students learn how to quickly assess and treat patients so they can be transported to a hospital.

“You’re doing it in a much more controlled environment so they’re able to learn the skills and the movements and understand it better,” Light said, in an interview with the Springfield Business Journal. “Then, when they do it actually in clinical with a real patient, a real ambulance bouncing around, they’re much more comfortable.”

Currently, Ozarks Tech offers 64 seats for the 16-week EMT training. The college offers 36 seats for paramedic training.

The new ambulance simulator will be the fourth one operated by Ozarks Tech. It will primarily be used by Middle College and alliance students who are studying to become an EMT.

“That allows us to expand additional EMT sections out because now we have an additional classroom lab and simulator to do it,” Light said.

The new simulator is not drivable. It will be stationary.

“The exterior of it looks just like an ambulance. It has lights and sounds and everything that can go off. The door in the back opens up so students can get experience pulling the cart in and out and with a patient in it,” Light said. “The neat thing is one of the sides is wide open so an observer can actually see what is happening inside the ambulance. That way, you can have instruction going on at the same time of the students being in the ambulance.”

The other ambulance simulators are located at Ozarks Tech’s Lebanon Center and its Table Rock and Springfield campuses.

“The students feel the compressed space and how to work in and around in that space to do what they need to do,” he said.

Ozarks Tech also works with CoxHealth to train EMT apprentices. The training was primarily scheduled in the summer but has been expanded.