Mobile unit provides unique emergency training for Maricopa firefighters

Remember Annie, the dummy from your long ago CPR class? Annie has been replaced. Phyllis – who can quickly become Phil – and their pediatric offspring Philip aren’t just your average dummies; they are state-of-the-art ones, utilized as part of PHI’s mobile training for fire departments and emergency personnel in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and California.

Philip is very lifelike; he breathes and blinks his eyes, wears Elmo slippers and holds his toy truck.

PHI is the parent company of Air Evac. It currently has two mobile intensive learning vehicles, with two more on the drawing board. Essentially, the unit is a very hi-tech ambulance, with the “patient,” Phil, Phyllis or Philip, replicating various emergency situations.

The patient’s various conditions are computer-generated by one of two technicians; that patient can be put into shock, can bleed, stop breathing, go into cardiac arrest or, in Phyllis’s case, go into labor. Units travel to various fire departments, ambulance services and hospital emergency or trauma departments to offer realistic training.

Two to five individuals can be inside the unit, which is laid out exactly like any ambulance with the same equipment and storage. A wide-screen plasma television mounted on the outside of the vehicle allows other firefighters, paramedics or emergency personnel to view the reenactments going on inside, which are relayed by strategically mounted cameras.

The screen mounted on the outside of the vehicle allows trainees to view what is going on inside; images are relayed by cameras like the one below.

Ryan Visina, marketing manager for Air Evac, says PHI has revolutionized the training field. “This is comprehensive training; we’ve put our all into this.” Speaking about his time working in the emergency response field, he added, “This would have made all the difference in the world. You can train in a classroom, but, in the field, things change and change quickly.”

The training vehicle replicates the inside of an ambulance with limited room to work.

Marketing Manager Ryan Visina talks animatedly about the difference the training vehicle would have made for him when he was an emergency responder.

PHI’s use of mobile intensive learning units has revolutionized the emergency preparedness field.

Eileen Blackstone, who also flies for Air Evac, calls working with the training unit, “the best job in the world.”

One of the benefits of the mobile training is that the technician outside the unit can alter the patient’s condition rapidly. Trainees never know what might happen. For example, a patient might be bleeding and then suddenly go into convulsions. The focus is realism and being able to think quickly to assess and respond to the patient’s medical needs.

Maricopa Fire Department recently hosted the mobile intensive learning vehicle. Firefighters trained inside or followed the procedures on the wide-screen television mounted outside the vehicle.

Station 574’s C-Shift (see related story), Mike Grant, Captain Jim Lairmore and Chazz Dupree were some of the many firefighters taking the emergency training.

Local residents will be the real beneficiaries of the preparation Maricopa firefighters received, thanks to Phil, Phyllis and Phillip, who are doing their part to bring state-of-the-art, realistic emergency preparedness to our community.