The pace of this program has changed a lot since the last post and these past few days have been very intense and demanding. We’ve moved on from outdoor leadership to WAFA training, which we all finished up today. The first day of WAFA was the first day that I could confidently say that I was burnt out. It was very classroom and lecture-based with extensive hours and no room to miss any information (I may have put the latter pressure on myself). We went through the entire scene survey, primary survey, and secondary survey with only 2-3 teaching scenarios. This made me worried about retaining course content just because of the sheer amount of new information being handed to us. The 8+ hour day reminded me a lot of Western high school, which was an environment unconducive to my learning style.
The second day was a lot more engaging. I was actively stimulated with a bunch of different scenarios where we were put in teams of three and practiced breaks, strains, massive hemorrhages, allergic reactions and asthma attacks, hypothermia, and so on. With each scenario practiced I became more and more confident in my skills and eventually the scene survey and primary survey became seamless. What really surprised me was my ability to compartmentalize each situation and act quickly to find the source of the patient’s complaints and come to a conclusion on treatment. These scenarios were also really great for practicing outdoor leadership. As a team of two, we were constantly communicating about scene surveys, who would fill what roles in the team, who would take the lead on the primary survey, and most importantly, we were holding each other accountable for any holes or mistakes in these processes. In addition, our team really clicked when we were tasked with moving Lilly (a spinal trauma patient) on a path to a makeshift stretcher. Because we had one of our own group members in our hands, it was crucial that we remained alert and kept communication up as a team. This required extreme attention to detail, listening to one another, and even taking a break and a step back halfway through our journey to the stretcher. We also didn’t have to just carry Lilly, but stabilize her head, spine, and legs in such a way that required precise, delicacy, and synchronous movement as a team. By the end of the exercise, we not only developed a great WAFA skill but built trust as a team and showed great leadership all around. There wasn’t a single person who was not contributing and acting as a leader in their own respect. All in all, it was a really great end to the day and we all celebrated with a walk up the figure 8.
Of course, we were taking everything really seriously and understood that these skills are very important, but it didn’t really hit me that we could make the difference between life and death until the third day when we were doing CPR training. For the past two days, I had been practicing taking a step back, calming myself in stressful situations, and compartmentalizing the event so that I could approach the patient with a level head. Up until CPR, our training was framed in a way where we were given a situation that could potentially lead to fatality and provided the tools to mitigate the medical problem. But on the third day, Akshay said something that really struck a chord with me. He was saying that we especially need to be methodical here because every second counts and losing a patient would haunt your nightmares for years and we should never second guess our treatment. CPR is a case where someone’s life is literally in your hands and you are their bridge between breathing, heartbeat, and stillness. So when I finished my test and walked away from the scene, I sat with the tension in my shoulders and the heavy breaths from applying compressions and I thought to myself “I hope I never have to do this–I hope I never have to be the one to pull someone away from death.” Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely loved WAFA and have become very confident in my skills, but that sinking realization that this could be a real person was really hard to come to terms with.
And so I had one more day. On our fourth day, we covered a few more topics and were thrown into a chaotic multiple-casualty simulation. There was a lightning strike and I had lost a finger, but all was well once they yelled “cut the scene.” Today was basically all practice, which kept me extremely engaged and allowed me to practice and refine my skills. At the end of the day, we took two more tests and were officially WAFA certified! It felt really good after having four very long days and completely filling two notebooks of information to have passed everything on the first go. I’ve got to extend many many thanks to the coffee and tea breaks, which were the only things keeping me going through the days with extensive burnout.
