CAMDEN — North East Mobile Health Services, the local medical emergency and ambulance service, took time July 25 to help train members of this summer’s Camden Area Youth Sailing Program about responding to injuries.

Kevin Davis, an emergency medical technician with North East, took an ambulance and equipment to the Camden Yacht Club to talk about accident and injury prevention.

The sailing program’s Safety Day included 40 students, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, as well as instructors in the 20s.

The participants in the Safety Day included sailors from different classes of small sail boats, with a wide range of skills from beginners just learning the basics, to advanced sailors preparing for an upcoming series of regattas.

Davis demonstrated the American Heart Association Hands-Only CPR curriculum. He also talked about allergic reactions and anaphylaxis, including EpiPen training, with equipment provided by Pen Bay Medical Center Education Department. 

He and others put the instructors and sailors through a training scenario on the water.

Each instructor  had a small group of sailors, and each group had an identified victim with an injury — laceration, broken bone in an extremity, hypothermia and concussion.

The task for the group was to recognize the emergency, communicate with program managers, establish the safety and comfort of the patient and the group, and take the injured person to shore, all following a set of established procedures.

The training ended with handing off the injured person to the ambulance crew from North East, giving a thorough report on what happened and what was done to help patient.

The day ended with a debriefing that included what was learned and what could have been done better or differently.

“Every day during the summer the CAYSP has dozens of kids on the water in Camden Harbor, learning and practicing basic and advanced sailing,” said Davis. “It is an environment where occasionally people get injured, fortunately usually minor injuries, that can require a safe, organized, fast evacuation from the water, all while ensuring the safety of the rest of the group.”

He said that training with a planned scenario, in a controlled environment, introduced the sailors to the kinds of injuries they might see.

“It gives them practice in specific basic first aid for the most common injuries, and walks them through the specific communication and logistical steps for a safe evacuation from the water,” said Davis. “The exercise is really a training scenario for everyone involved so that, in the event of an actual injury, they will have the tools to safely, effectively get the injured person to shore and into the care of program managers, parents, and if necessary, a waiting ambulance crew from North East.”