The Centre for Military Medicine in Lahti, Finland was established in 2006. The center provides medical training for military personnel with particular emphasis on management of typical military first response emergencies on the battlefield and multifarious disasters. The center also offers its educational services to external civil organizations.

Simulation training

The center for Military Medicine was looking to renew its educational models as the instructors wanted to bring more realism into replicated war-like scenarios developed for paramedic training. The center found that a simulation studio would enable the training team to recreate more lifelike battlefields, treatment sites, and rare types of emergency situations than the more traditional methods had previously allowed for. Hence, a full-scale simulation lab with a control room was built where both soldiers and civilians train today. By adjusting the lighting, applying smoke and the sound of explosions, soldiers experience an augmented realistic feel to the staged battles, where a patient’s injury may vary from a gunshot wound to a fragment injury. The training sessions are recorded by wireless microphones and three cameras and stored on a DVD that is analyzed during personalized debriefings that take place immediately after each scenario.

Performing under stress

The main purpose of the simulation is to train crisis resource management; to enhance the ability to communicate and act under pressure in a disciplined, productive manner within teams. Topics of the pre-planned scenarios are revealed to the soldiers right before start, but the trainees have no clue as to how the scenario will develop, as this is controlled by the instructor in the control room.

Simulated soldier injuries

Gunshot injuries, fragment injury, blast injury, mine injury, fire injury, pressure injury, victim of a chemical weapon, victim of a biological weapon

Simulated civilian situations

Brain injury, hypothermia, impaired general condition, drowning, cardiogenic shock, convulsions, poisoning, victim of radioactive material exposure, chest pain, heart failure, electric shock etc.

RN, simulation trainer Jutta Sarakangas says, “The trainees are all very satisfied with the simulation program.” The center’s training equipment currently includes 6 SimMan, a selection of Resusci Anne manikins along with MiniAnne/CPRAnytime kits that are used for initial acquisition of basic life support skills. Although the program has grown over time, Jutta Sarakangas concludes, ‘’Hopefully, we will have an opportunity to exchange some of our SimMan manikins for a SimMan 3G in the future.’’