Early Monday morning, on October 8, nineteen eager volunteers sat in a semicircle in the meeting room at Bainbridge Island Fire Department’s Station 23. Before this crop of new BIEMRs stood Remote Medical International instructors Adrienne Boland and Lauren Ledford.
The group was part of the third training round of Bainbridge Island Emergency Medical Responders. The BIEMRs are City of Bainbridge Island-supervised volunteers who will staff Islandwide emergency hubs during a large-scale crisis to provide interim medical care. The new trainees will bring the number of BIEMRs to a total of 74.
Boland and Ledford are putting the trainees through the paces in an intensive five days of classroom learning following an initial week of online study. The trainees will learn a broad range of skills ranging from stopping arterial bleeds to diagnosing and treating heat stroke, from treating gunshot wounds to helping victims of lightning strikes. The course includes lots of outdoor practice as well as a two-hour nighttime training event at Manzanita Park.
Remote Medical International describes the course as follows:
The new BIEMRs will graduate as certified Wilderness First Responders and will then be required to maintain their skills through participation in at least two events and two trainings per year.
The City of Bainbridge Island subsidizes most of the cost of the training.
To read more about the RMI course, click here.
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Photo by Christina Aitchison.
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