Oct SAR Training

Our monthly search and rescue training will be this Sunday, October 15 starting at 1:00pm at our Paden City storage facility located on West Adam Street.. At the last training we decided to do a rescue training on drownings, a GPS class and then work on our radio communications. We will start with the presentation listed below and then David Smith will go over the operation of the GPS receiver. After this we will go over our radio communications procedures. Then we will do a GPS exercise in the Paden City Park using our portable radios.

Sarah Frances McClure will be giving a presentation entitled: Drowning Management and Prevention.

The objectives of this presentation are to explore the definition, epidemiology, prevention, pathophysiology, and treatment – essentially what is drowning, who drowns, how do we prevent people from drowning, what happens to the body when someone is drowning, and what do we do if drowning has occurred. The biggest key players in survival of a drowning victim are those who are there when the person drowns, those who answer the 911 call, and those who arrive immediately following. Let’s talk about some of these survival techniques and discuss their feasibility within Tyler County SAR. Following the lecture I will do a quick hands on skill lab on Hypothermia Wraps. This skill will be crucial to victim survival in the coming months. This should last around one hour.

Here is a breif introduction to Sara Frances;

About me:I am from San Angelo, TX. As a young child, I was very active outdoors and spent time hunting and fishing with my dad and brother. I went to a high school in Asheville, NC, that was very focus on outdoors activities. I became a competitive rock climber and mountain biker and continued competing through college at The University of the South in Sewanee, TN.

I was an EMT-IV, EMT-I, and EMT-P for various types of services since 2006. I worked SAR in Tennessee during college, and I worked rural and urban EMS in Williamson County, TX, and Houston, TX, respectively. Houston was a high trauma, high call volume system where the fewest calls I ran in a single 24 hour shift was 13 and the most was 21. Williamson County was a rural system with a lower call volume but longer transport time. Both EMS systems had very involved medical directors who taught me a lot about people and medicine and urged me to go to medical school. Going to medical school, I never intended to leave the world of pre-hospital medicine and hope to build on my paramedic skills to build a strong EMS service in the future where I can encourage other prehospital providers to be the best they can be.

In 2016 I was 1 of 2 medical students chosen to be an extern for the Carolina Wilderness EMS Externship. As externs, we moved to Burke County, NC, and worked with the special operations medics that respond to Linville Gorge, South Mountain State Park, and other austere environments of the county. We learned the intricacies of medical direction among a rural EMS team as well as the special considerations in a county where SAR is a weekly occurrence. We responded to all SAR calls as an extension of the office of the medical director and provided in service to all pre-hospital care providers on the topic of pediatric emergencies in the wilderness environment. Fun fact: I spent a month of my 3rd year of medical school in Nepal working in a travel clinic in Kathmandu (CIWEC Clinic) where we saw a lot of diarrhea and high altitude illness. I traveled with the Everest ER docs to the basecamp of Everest to help them get settled for their 3 month stay during the 2016 climbing season, the year after the devastating earthquake in Nepal.

In my free time I enjoy martial arts in the form of Jiu Jitsu and Krav Maga. I spend every moment I can outside, adventuring with my dog, Annie. Currently a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine working as a Resident Physician in Emergency Medicine at Memorial Health System in Marietta Ohio.