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News: Roane State's Herron uses expertise to create realistic scenarios for paramedic students

Oct. 26, 2016

By Bob Fowler
Staff writer

When it comes to creating realistic mock injuries, Roane State Community College paramedic instructor Tom Herron is a maestro.

Herron can make fake blood from Karo syrup and red food coloring, and second-degree burns from crinkled, wet toilet paper – dyed and dried – and flecked with black pepper.

For a gruesome evisceration, where small intestines are protruding from a lacerated abdomen, he fills condoms with warm oatmeal and glues them to the victim’s stomach. That replicates the “warm and squishy feeling” of an intestine, he said.

Herron, in the Emergency Medical Services profession for 30 years, is the clinical coordinator and associate professor of Roane State’s EMS program on the college’s Knox County campus.

He put his makeup talents to work recently in scenarios intended to acquaint Roane State paramedic program students with real-life incidents they may one day face.

The scenarios: A woman injured in a nightclub brawl, an explosion of a propane tank, a pedestrian run over by a texting driver, and a motorcycle crash where a passenger was dragged several feet.

The Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support program is a component of Roane State’s third semester paramedic curriculum.

“It’s designed to create field-tested paramedics ready to provide our community the best care available,” said David S. Blevins, director of Roane State EMS education.

 

Roane State instructor Tom Herron specializes in creating realistic-looking emergency simulations that prepare paramedic students for situations in the field. Herron’s expertise helps students better understand the types of injuries they may have to treat.

Students in the nightclub scene, where a woman had been hit over the head with a beer bottle, had to contend with loud music and flashing strobe lights in a darkened room as they attended to her.

When the victim suddenly pulled out a weapon, the students froze rather than grabbing the gun, Herron said. Other than that potentially lethal error, “they handled their scenes appropriately,” he said. “All of them said they couldn’t believe how realistic it was and how it prepared them for what they may encounter in the field.”

The curriculum was developed in cooperation with the American College of Surgeons’ Committee on Trauma, Herron said.

There’s a big demand for paramedics nationwide and locally, Herron said, and the students participating in the Sept. 23 scenarios are in a class added in January to help meet that need.

Assisting in those drills were Rebecca Buntock from Roane State’s Continuing Healthcare Education, Anderson County EMS Deputy Director Bobbie Jo Henderson, paramedic Carrissa Keathley and Herron’s wife, Michele.

Tom Herron’s expertise in creating realistic mock injuries for trauma scenarios will be the subject of a presentation he’s scheduled to make next summer during the annual Tennessee EMS Educators Association conference in Murfreesboro.

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