UPMC helps first responders prepare for emergencies with new simulation training center

UPMC has started using a simulation training center designed to prepare first responders for real-world emergencies.

The Simulation Training Center at UPMC’s Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania features simulated environments including an intensive care unit, an ambulance and a helicopter. It creates highly realistic scenarios that allow emergency responders to practice critical skills needed in actual field operations.

“What this does is provides them an experience,” Jim Houser said, president for Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Pennsylvania. “It provides them an atmosphere, an environment, if you will, to apply all the things that they come here with. And then we continue to train them in and for, in an environment that they’re going to see patients and care for them.”