Mobile Simulation Labs: Making EMS Training More Engaging and Accessible

Nearly 85 percent of the Seminole County, FL, Fire Department’s (SCFD) emergency responses are classified as EMS in nature. The need for relevant, efficient and engaging medical training is more essential than ever.

To help to address this need, the SCFD recently began to field a Mobile Simulation Lab to provide crews with enhanced, in-depth EMS training and recertification opportunities right inside of the bay doors at all of the department’s 20 stations.

Retrofitting a rescue rig

The brainchild for the “Sim Lab” began in 2017, when the EMS Division chief, Matt Kinley (who is the current fire chief), was looking for a way to increase EMS training while keeping crews within their response areas so that they could be dispatched to high-priority calls if needed.

The Sim Lab, which was converted from a retired rescue chassis, leverages simulation and monitoring technology to provide firefighters with realistic, hands-on training opportunities that go beyond the kind of instruction that they might receive in a traditional classroom setting.

The back of the Sim Lab is laid out similarly to a rescue unit and is where crews practice lifesaving techniques on one of three advanced manikins. Trainers watch from the cab via six embedded cameras. Instructors can provide live voice feedback to crews and record footage for review following the scenario.

For the conceptual stage of the Sim Lab, the biggest challenge was procuring the equipment for the interior. Retrofitting a rescue rig with this technology also created some challenges, particularly from a fitment standpoint.

Mobile implementation

The Sim Lab launched nearly a year ago. The department has aimed to visit four stations per day (all in the same battalion area) in a traditional 40-hour work week. Two firefighter/paramedic instructors lead a one-hour training. The department strives to reach all of its personnel on a particular topic every month.

In 2024, the SCFD conducted 17,000 hours of EMS training at the Seminole County Fire Training Facility, which includes recertification, practical and didactic components, and medical director meetings. The Sim Lab provides a mechanism to increase EMS training by 5,500 hours, or a 32 percent increase compared with previously. A bonus: Many of these lessons serve as continuing-education units.

Thus far, topics included advanced airway management, neuroprotective CPR, treatment of extremity injuries and hemorrhaging. All levels of care are attempted to be covered, from basic life support skills to complex and advanced cases. Topics are planned based on feedback from EMS group meetings and seasonal matters, such as reviewing heat emergencies in June.

Feedback onsite

Utilizing the feedback manikins has been a great benefit to conducting a high-fidelity simulation to ensure correct medication and dosage administration, ventilatory efficacy, etc. Because trainings are set up in the same way that the crew would run a call—without instructor interference—personnel run scenarios without interruptions. Instructors are able to talk through the manikins to give personnel real-time responses from the “patient” to the trainees’ questions.

Afterward, debriefing is conducted in the station to see firsthand what aspects worked and where improvement is needed. 

A huge advantage: The scenarios allow field personnel realistic practice for low-frequency/high-acuity EMS calls.

From an operational standpoint, the Sim Lab positively influences resource availability and saves crews travel time to and from the department’s training center. This contributed to an overwhelmingly positive response from personnel.

Ultimately, we have had an overwhelming response from personnel. This includes in regard to scenarios that we run (e.g., acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema, bleeding control, carbon monoxide inhalation and cyanide positioning) and our utilization of portable training props, such as wound-packing cubes for bleeding control, to make the training as hands-on and as realistic as possible