UNMC students take part in mock triage training

Posted By: Channel 8 Eyewitness News
8@klkntv.com

Some UNMC nursing students had an important lesson in triage treatment Friday. The goal was to give students an idea of how they need to act in a mass-casualty situation.

There were 60 students who took part, each having a different role in the simulation.

"We actually take the student group and identify a handful of them to be the responders and the rest of the group gets these victims that tells what their situation is in the disaster," said Elizabeth Beam, an educator at UNMC.

The training is rain through UNMC’s HEROES program. HEROES works with students and medical providers across the state to also train them for triage and other situations where several people may be injured.

UNMC says triage training is more important than ever before and nurses need to learn how to handle mass-casualty events as they will likely be called up to help treat the injured.

In Friday’s simulation, five students played the role of nurses arriving on scene, with the remaining students acting like victims with varying types of injury.

"Today we did a situation that was a tornado. We had five nurses come in and find multiple victims. Some were very injured some had already ‘deceased,’" said Lori Peterson, a UNMC student.

Beam said past students have come back years later and said that the training really helped them in their careers.