Above: Nursing students at MGCCC’s Simulation Center, located at the Advanced Manufacturing and Technology Center in Gulfport. Under the interdisciplinary emergency training grant, MGCCC nursing students and oil and gas industry employees will complete training scenarios together at MGCCC’s Simulation Center.

Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College has been awarded a grant of $124,931 by the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences for the Interdisciplinary Training for the Gulf of Mexico Workforce project. This one-year pilot project, beginning September 1, 2015, is designed to explore the potential of simulated work-environment training to enhance the interdisciplinary skills and communication abilities between workers in the oil and gas industry and health care profession.

The proposed project will develop training scenarios utilizing simulation techniques exposing participants to emergency situations in a safe and controlled environment at MGCCC’s Simulation Center located at the college’s Advanced Manufacturing and Technology Center in Gulfport. Scenarios will immerse approximately 20 individuals in each profession in simulated health-related emergencies found in the oil and gas production or other industrial environment designed to enhance communications during an emergency.

“Even though oil and gas workers and health care professionals are extensively prepared for their occupation utilizing traditional classroom instruction and on-the-job training or clinical settings, it is not common for each group to receive more than a basic introduction to the other’s craft,” stated Dr. Jason Pugh, vice president of Teaching and Learning, Student Services and Community Campus at MGCCC.

Pugh said the grant, which funds only the pilot project, seeks to determine if the hands-on training scenarios will better prepare both groups of workers to function as a team in an emergency. Using the Simulation Center as a place to develop and implement the training scenarios will allow participants the opportunity to problem-solve in not only logistical planning and communication but also to work hands on with simulators that can react just like injured individuals.

Dr. Joan Hendrix, college dean of Nursing and Allied Health, said this type of training has not been provided for employees in the oil and gas industry on the Gulf Coast or for the health care professionals working in those environments. “Healthcare professionals who desire to work in an offshore environment may receive only a fundamental introduction to industrial accidents or hazardous materials,” she said. “Oil and gas workforce professionals may receive only basic first-aid training. This lack of cross-training is a restriction to medical, environmental and emergency response in the Gulf of Mexico workplace, especially in communication between the two professions.”

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