A mobile medical unit, or hospital on wheels as it’s also described, came to Nelson and Grand Forks recently. The unit was built for the Vancouver Olympics and is the only facility of its kind in Canada.
Clinical Educator with the BC Mobile Medical Unit, Jesse Sheridan, explains how it works. “In here we have about 1100 square feet. It’s all kind of contained within a semi truck that pops out like an RV. Then once we set up on site have a lot of equipment that needs to come into here cause you can image once this all closes up for transport there’s not a lot of room to carry equipment. So that’s what the second unit is for and that’s the supply truck.”
It’s used for a number of different purposes including clinical education, large public events, planned hospital renovations, or in disaster situations. A possible example is the recent wildfire in Trail where access to the hospital was restricted.
Sheridan elaborates on some of the education he was doing in Nelson and Grand Forks this week.
“We’re going to be doing some support for the hospital for the OR, doing a sort of scenario for about three hours that covers different things like CPR, chest tube insertions and crisis resource management.”
Two half day sessions for staff in the emergency room were also held. Sheridan says, “it provides a relativistic learning environment in a hospital setting that is really tough to do in your own hospital when you have clinical capacity in there.”
He says it provides space to learn that is tailored to the site.