Everyone knew it was coming, but the sound of someone panicked, yelling, “There’s been a crash! It looks like somebody died!” was shocking nonetheless.
The wailing sirens and flashing lights were real. The wrecked car, though from a different non-staged crash, was real. The EMTs and other emergency personnel ... very real.
The teenager who laid “dying” in the street was an actor, but her distressed presence still weighed heavy in the air.
The whole scenario—including the tense, pre-filmed ER scene where the teenager was “pronounced dead” and the somber coffin-side funeral service—was part of the “Is It Worth It?” event produced by UTMB Trauma Services, in conjunction with the UTMB Center for Addiction Research.
The event, designed for ages 15 and up due to the graphic and unsettling nature of the demonstration, was funded by a grant from the Texas Department of Transportation and organized by Miranda Culligan, injury prevention specialist with UTMB Trauma Services.
“This is a very emotional production. It can be very upsetting,” Culligan explained. “But we feel passionately that it can save a life by accurately depicting the dangers and consequences of impaired driving.”
The three-hour event, which took place Aug. 28 at the Health Education Center on UTMB’s Galveston Campus, also included presentations by local authorities and people who lost family members in impaired-driving crashes, a virtual-reality drunken—or distracted—driving simulator, three levels of “drunk goggles” that re-create a sense of driving impaired either by alcohol or drugs; and tours of emergency vehicles.
The demonstration and other elements of the event were intended to vividly depict the consequences of impaired driving. But along with that, participants got a first-hand look at the role emergency services first-responders play in dealing with the aftermath of a crash, no matter what the cause.
“EMS as a whole is a chronically underrepresented demographic when it comes to first responders. I chose to participate in this event because I wanted to increase awareness of what EMS does and how vital it is to allied health as a whole,” said Ian Davis, operations manager for the Galveston Area Ambulance Authority.
Davis added that in the state of Texas only about 26 percent of EMS personnel actually perform patient care in some capacity.
“This likely has to do with pay, fatigue and under-appreciation. Some of this is our own fault because medics tend to focus on their job and the medicine and not how we’re perceived by the public,” he said. “However, in order to begin making paramedicine a career, instead of a steppingstone to nursing or firefighting or any of the other myriad professions that paramedics leave to join, we need to participate in events like this so that we get recognized for what we do.
“In addition, it builds closer bonds with our partnering agencies and facilities, UTMB in this case, and the more effectively we work together the better the patient outcomes can be,” he said.
Galveston Area Ambulance Authority paramedic Dahnia Rees concurs.
“I wanted to participate so people could see what it is that we actually do out in the field
and hopefully help kids make better decisions,” she said.
In the end, it’s all about the job and the lives saved. Davis said he’s not convinced events like “Is It Worth It” make as big an impact on the public, especially teens, as organizers might hope—but that’s no reason not to present them.
“Events and PSAs like this have existed for a long time, and the general public doesn’t seem to change that drastically in response to it,” he said. “However, even if we’re able to impress upon one person the importance of the message, maybe that is one life saved.
“And though that may not make my job as a whole easier, I think it’s worth it in the long run because I didn’t get into EMS to make my job easier or to change the whole world,” Davis said.
“I got into it to help the limited number of people I’m able to make contact with, and that’s good enough for me.”