On our last episode of the EMSEduCast, we talked at length with Gregg Lord about Zero Hour: America’s Medic.  This is a video game simulation tool for EMS professionals meant to give responders the opportunity to experience a mass casualty scenario.  To be honest, as a game it leaves a lot to be desired.  But in the same breath I would like to tell everyone to go out and give it a try so that it can receive the funding it needs to become much, much more.  The game has a solid foundation, and could evolve into a well rounded tool for EMS educators.  Right now they are only charging you for the download, so it is the cheapest $3,000,000 piece of training equipment you will ever use.  Now that the serious review is over, and we have made friends with Gregg Lord, (although he did say he was friends with Skip Kirkwood, but we won’t hold that against him) I thought I would give this a true Gomerville review.

Like any other 3D video game you have ever seen, it has a tutorial.  Walk here.  Look over here.  Hook a BVM up to a patient and make her look like a duck billed platypus…you know, the usual.  Is this how they use them at nursing homes?  No wait, they strap a non-rebreather onto the patient and try to squeeze the reservoir bag, that’s what they do in nursing homes.  But I digress.

It isn’t long after this that you get your first call.  In the next scene you will find yourself in passenger seat of an ambulance racing to your first gig.  And where is your first call?  At a third floor walk-up on the lower East side.  Dispatch also tells you that they have already called three times today, so that’s realism for you.  Then you meet the poor guy pictured below:

He’s been barfing up his toenails ever since he visited Africa, and it is assumed that he must have some sort of bug he picked up on the trip.  I think the call would have been a little more realistic if he had been to Pancho’s Mexican Buffet, but no one consulted me during development.

I had trouble with this scenario.  Alright.  Full disclosure here.  I failed it three times.  Once because I didn’t put on enough PPE.  So I said screw it and put on an SCBA.  That’ll show ‘em!  Then I didn’t put blankets on everyone.  Alright.  Screw that.  I’m the Red Freakin’ Cross from now on.  Everyone gets a cheap blanket and an N95 mask.  Nope, still failed.  This time I crossed some 20 minute limit.  So for attempt number three, I went open throttle.  Man, I had that Tyvek suit and SCBA on in 20 seconds.  I went around the apartment spraying blankets, masks, and good cheer.  I took everyone’s blood pressure, pulse and respirations, and called for backup as fast as I could and I still failed for some unknown reason.  Actually, I should know the reason but by that time I had thrown my monitor out in my yard and had started drinking.  The rest of the evening is a little fuzzy.

The next day I tried my hand at the big mass casualty earthquake scenario.  Since I had that hangover from the previous night’s debauchery, I was moving a little slow.  But I had 30 people to triage, so I moved my bloody mary over to the left side of the desk to keep my mouse hand free from obstruction.  I knew there would be a time limit for this too, so I went fast.  I brought 15 years of EMS experience to the table, and clicked as fast as I could.  The verdict?  I failed again, went over the time limit and this time thought about putting on a Leonard Cohen record and pulling the monitor into the tub with me.

I was pretty confused at the results on this one.  So I took a screen shot just so you guys would know that I wasn’t lying.  Something was fishy about this.  I marked three patients as green, and it said that I should have tagged them as yellow.  However, in the post-game analysis none of them had injuries, and their RPM scores were all normal.  What gives?  I still say all these whiners need to shake it off and walk to the nearest immediate care clinic while I get busy killing off some real patients.  But hey, what do I know?

The next scenario had me going over to the treatment area of the same earthquake, and dealing out some medical care to a sea of people on backboards.  Everyone was covered with a blanket.  (Again with the freaking blankets!)  Now how can I assess a trauma patient when they are covered up?  So off comes the blanket.

How about that for realism?  Your trauma patient’s a fat guy, and you can see his junk.  By the way, the blurring effect was not added by me, that is actually in-game.  So I pressed pause and pondered the strange position of that backboard strap while I poured another bloody mary.  The rest of the morning was a blur of me failing various scenarios while becoming more and more depressed.  I eventually exhausted my Cohen collection, and moved on to some of the late experimental Tom Waits stuff before I took a header into my office waste can.  My wife later found me like that.  A piece of celery blocking my airway, my right index finger still upon the mouse, and a fat naked trauma patient on my screen with failing marks.  It was embarrassing to say the least.

When I finally sobered up,  I realized that this game, this simulation, this 3 million dollar training aid has the potential to be something great.  I desperately want to see this develop to the point where I can edit my own scenarios and assign them to students for homework.  In a future blog post I may go over my wish list for this software, but I will leave that for another conversation.

The verdict?  I failed every scenario and never found the chainsaw or the rocket launcher so I am not sure if i can put this game in the 5 star category.  However, we had lots of death and mayhem, patients vomiting blood, and fat-naked-guy-foo.  When you apply that to a $14.95 price tag, you can’t go wrong.  So stop on by George Washington University, pick up a copy, and tell ‘em the Buckman sent ya.  If you get disappointed with the game play, then have a drink or two.  I also suggest some upbeat music and a thick skin.