On Saturday, March 24, 2018, Coffee Regional Medical Center took the lead in the area of Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Readiness by hosting the Medical Association of Georgia’s first physician-led Medical Reserve Corp, the state’s first unit of volunteer physicians who are trained to respond to declared emergencies in Georgia. Orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Jim Barber along with CRMC staff, coordinated the training for the approximate 15 local physicians as well as many others . After the training Saturday, the group now has over 100 qualified physicians who could be deployed to provide medical disaster relief throughout the state of Georgia.
Training offered on Saturday was provided to the physicians, local law enforcement/fire/EMS/EMA , CRMC staff, over 25 South Georgia State College Registered Nursing students, and the general public. Topics included personal and family preparation for a disaster, helicopter loading and unloading safety, mobile hospital set-up and take-down, and Stop the Bleed training.
Stop the Bleed is a state-wide campaign that emphasizes teaching people how to use tourniquets to save lives in bleeding emergencies. The GA Trauma Commission’s goal is to provide free training to the personnel in each public school in Georgia and then, provide free tourniquet kits for each school’s use. A person can die of a bleeding emergency in less than 5 minutes so education of laypersons can reduce the likelihood of deaths from these types of injuries.
Certificates were given to almost 50 new instructors in our area for their successful completion of the program. CRMC can provide this training to other interested community groups upon request.
CRMC really had wonderful support from our local law enforcement/fire/ems/ and EMA community. We would like to extend a special thank you to all of them for their support as well as Air Evac for providing the helicopter during the event. We would also like to say a special thank you to Dr. Jim Barber for providing the leadership to help form this group and for bringing this training to our area and our physician team, and for offering his leadership to make Coffee County safer and the state more prepared for emergency events!
For more information about Stop the Bleed, please call Deon Tucker, CRMC Education, at 912-384-1900 ext. 5670 or email deon.tucker@coffeeregional.org.