Mountain House Fire Department and Biomedical Innovation Students
Hiya Das and Ann Charles were inspired to learn about Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) after attending last year’s Cal-HOSA State Leadership Conference. They both attended CERT Training at the Mountain House Fire Department over the summer. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program educates volunteers about disaster preparedness for the hazards that may occur where they live. Per FEMA (2022) CERT trains volunteers in basic disaster response skills, such as:
- Fire safety
- Light search and rescue
- Team organization
- Disaster medical operations
Hiya and Ann are currently competing in this event for this year’s Cal-HOSA CERT Competition. To showcase their skills they created an educational simulation for their Biomedical Innovation Capstone project. They teamed up with Neha Yalavarti, Ryan Alex and several other students to create a scenario involving a teenage car accident that included extinguishing a fire, triaging the patients and treating a variety of injuries including heat stroke, anaphylaxis, severe bleeding and a fracture. The Mountain House Fire Station staff supported the students and worked with them to ensure a safe and informative experience. The simulation was presented four times throughout the day to a total of 140 students from the Principles of Biomedical Science (PBS) class (the first year Biomedical Pathway class ). The PBS students completed a questionnaire before and after the simulation. Their results showed a twenty-two percent improvement in their questionnaire scores and over ninety percent of the PBS students reported learning something new from the simulation.