Emergency Management - Fall 2008 - (Page 50)

immediate; priority 2, urgent; priority 3, delayed; or priority 4, deceased. The game scores players’ decisions after they’ve tagged all casualties, informing them if their actions were correct for each casualty addressed. Partners in Lifesaving Virtual training could give first responder students a more immediate feel for actual medical emergencies than traditional training exercises where medical students pretend to be injured. “They can’t make themselves pale. They can’t give themselves shallow breathing,” said Jolyon Webb, an art manager for TruSim. “They can’t kind of force adrenaline to their system to make them sweat. They just have to tell you that ‘I’m sweaty. I’m kind of feeling very pale and faint.’ With a digital character, you can Digital characters are located in different places on the street in various degrees of injury. Some can be triaged, but others are beyond help. A gameplay video reveals that players are transported to a city street that’s been ravaged by a bomb blast. You can tell it’s just a game, but the graphics are realistic enough to inform the user that this playing experience is an impressively three-dimensional rendered affair that’s on par with much of what’s available for the current generation of home video game consoles. As the scenario begins, the sidewalk is a mess of broken glass, overturned chairs and wood and metal bars, and three civilians have suffered varied injuries. In the game, players move the cursor to look around the scene, but in the video the player immediately starts sorting the people who need urgent attention from those who don’t. This is done by instructing everyone who is well enough to walk to go to the ambulance crews — an action called a mobility sieve. Then the player can focus on the remaining people who are too injured to move themselves. Players move the cursor from casualty to casualty and pick which one to examine. Randomly generated victims are dispersed with various injuries, such as exposed organs and bones, profuse nosebleeds, someone lying face up with no external injuries or deceased. Once at a casualty, players enter “examination mode” and are offered five triage options: The player can talk to the casualty to see if she can talk back; check her airway, breathing rate or pulse rate; and perform a capillary refill check for blood flow. (In a real-world capillary refill check, a first responder holds the victim’s 50 “They can’t make themselves pale. They can’t give themselves shallow breathing… They just have to tell you that ‘I’m sweaty. I’m kind of feeling very pale and faint.’ With a digital character, you can actually make all of those things explicit and show them to people.” — Jolyon Webb, art manager, TruSim hand up and presses a fingernail for about five seconds; the time it takes for the color to return to the flesh beneath the nail is the capillary refill time.) When players finish the triage actions, they tag the casualty based on who needs care the most. They can label a casualty priority 1, actually make all of those things explicit and show them to people.” According to Webb, the idea for Triage Trainer began in 2006 as a research project commissioned in part by the UK’s Ministry of Defence to train field-hospital personnel in conflict zones. TruSim worked on the game with tech- Triage Trainer takes players on a journey through a devastated city street in ﬁrst-person view.

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Emergency Management - Fall 2008

Emergency Management - Fall 2008 Contents Contributors Editor’s Letter In the Field Deep Freeze EM Bulletin Major Player In the News Uncharted Waters Bio-Sensing Bluegills Joint Accounts Education Directory Degress of Change Triage in 3-D Products Eric's Corner Last Word

Emergency Management - Fall 2008

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