McCabe Ambulance chief of operations Michael McCabe, left, and McCabe clinical coordinator Daryl Gruenhagen, right, congratulate EMTs Russell Cahn, a West Orange native and current resident of Bloomfield, and Amber Henderson upon their competition victory.
BAYONNE, NJ — McCabe Ambulance personnel showed their prowess in their life-saving abilities by taking first place in a statewide emergency medical services competition.
Certified Emergency Medical Technicians Amber Henderson, 23, and West Orange native Russell Cahn, 25, took top honors at the competition held at the New Jersey Statewide Conference on EMS in Atlantic City recently.
The team’s win was especially notable because it was the first McCabe team ever to enter the competition and because it marked the first time in the competition’s history that it was won by first-time entrants.
The competition focused on how a team of first responders would react in various emergency situations. Organizers did not say what those circumstances would be, so participants had to be prepared for anything.
For Henderson and Cahn, who now lives in Bloomfield, it meant three months of training together, including simulations with mannequins. The teammates practiced treating trauma and cardiac arrest victims, and responding to other medical scenarios.
For the two, it also meant thinking out of the box.
“We tried to come up with things that would throw us for a loop,” Cahn said. Unsafe and chaotic scenes had to be anticipated.
“Basically, we did everything we know how to do, but we did it repeatedly,” Henderson said. “We did it until it was effortless, that you didn’t have to think about it; that you know how to do it, and when to do it.”
Besides having to be prepared for virtually any calamity, Henderson and Cahn had to learn to work together. They prepared to delegate tasks to each other and third parties, and to do so quickly and efficiently.
The two teammates’ hard work paid off for them at the competition. They performed well in the first stage, which featured two scenarios. The first was an elderly male with chest pains and shortness of breath who went into cardiac arrest. Then it was a child brought in burned by boiling water from a pot pulled off a stove.
“They did a good job of making everything seem so realistic,” Henderson said. “You didn’t feel that this was boring, like ‘Oh, I’m working on mannequins.’”
The second and final stage was the real test for Henderson and Cahn. After being sequestered for nearly two hours, they were handed bullet-proof vests, tactical helmets, gloves, sheets and blankets. They did not know what to expect. Then, paired with two EMTs whom they had never met from Capital Health Systems, the McCabe employees were led into the scene.
It was an “active shooter in a nightclub” scenario, patterned after the Pulse shooting in Orlando, Fla., last year, the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
“You didn’t expect that. I don’t think any one of us did,” Henderson said. “We looked at each other and I think we thought, ‘I don’t know how we’re going to do this.’”
There were “bodies,” screaming, yelling and music blaring. There were “victims” covered in simulation blood.
“It was as realistic as a shooting could get; they had everything there,” Cahn said.
The McCabe team members sprang into action. There were two keys.
“We had to stay calm — because the scene wasn’t calm — and we had to go in confident,” Cahn said. “I knew that we had to take a deep breath and do what we needed to do.”
And to top it off, there was an audience of 100 people watching their every move.
Meticulously, efficiently and confidently, the four EMTs went about their business, tagging victims as to how they could be helped — or whether they could be helped at all.
“That’s the tough part of mass-casualty incidents,” Henderson said of the rapid, multiple, on-site triage decisions.
“Victims” included a woman who had been shot multiple times and had to be handled extremely carefully.
“I told her I’m here with you. I’m not going to leave you,” Henderson said. “We’re going to get through this together.”
And just as the EMTs thought the scenario could not get any more chaotic, in came a “second shooter.”
Despite all the curveballs thrown to the participants, they handled the situation with poise. The 20-minute exercise was over quickly, seeming to defy time.
“It felt like 30 seconds,” Henderson said.
With the competition now over for McCabe’s, the other two finalist teams took their turns. They completed them and then it was up to the judges.
The McCabe EMTs were anxious a bit longer, having to wait the rest of the day, and then into the evening, to find out at dinner that they had won. Teams from Jersey City Medical Center and Hackensack University Medical Center came in second and third, respectively.
Henderson and Cahn won a trophy and individual medals. Since they are now the reigning champions, they will defend their title at the next annual conference.
“I hadn’t really thought about what would happen if we did win,” Cahn said. “After it, there’s a sense of ‘I really know what I’m doing.’ There’s a confidence. There’s a self-satisfaction. All those hours and shifts really mean something.”
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