Six Programs Respond to Domestic Violence Call

Students from six College of DuPage Health Sciences programs practiced their skills as they responded to a domestic violence simulation recently held on campus.

Click here for photos and to watch a video from the simulation. In addition, click here to watch a report on Naperville Community Television-Channel 17.

The in-depth exercise involved a domestic dispute between a "couple," with the husband shooting his wife and starting their apartment on fire. One child jumped from a second-floor balcony while a second child was trapped in the apartment. Tom Murray, supervisor of Patron Services at the McAninch Arts Center, and Jaime Lemens, Nursing Lab Technician, played the roles of the arguing couple, while two high-tech mannequins were used as the children and were programmed with varying injuries.

The simulation took two months to plan and tested the skills of students in the EMT, Nursing, Surgical Technology, CT, Nuclear Medicine and Respiratory Care programs, giving them an opportunity to both interact with each other and with a live victim. The exercise began on the street scene in the Homeland Security Education Center and involved officers from the College of DuPage police department and area firefighters. EMT students then transported patients to the Hospital Simulation Lab in the Health and Science Center, where Nursing students assessed the patients and transported them to various other education labs, including the CT lab, Nuclear Medicine lab and the Simulated Operating Room.

Students not involved in the simulation watched on screens from eight classrooms as the exercise unfolded. Various administrators also took part in the simulation, including Joseph Collins, Executive Vice President, as a surgeon in the OR; Jean Kartje, Vice President of Academics, as a doctor in the Hospital lab; Vickie Gukenberger, Associate Dean of Nursing and Health Sciences, as the shooting victim's mother; Tom Cameron, Dean of Health and Sciences, and Karen Solt, Associate Dean of Health and Sciences, as bystanders who made the initial call to 911; and Joe Cassidy, Dean of Continuing Education and Extended Learning, and Tom Brady, Associate Dean/Director of Continuing Education and the Homeland Security Training Institute, who both scrubbed up for the OR.

For more about the Health and Sciences programs at College of DuPage, visit www.cod.edu/academics/divisions/health_sciences.