Preventable injuries are the number one killer of young people in Canada.
But an internationally-recognized program called Preventing Alcohol and Risk-related Trauma in Youth (PARTY) aims to change those odds by educating Grade 10 students about how to manage risks and make wise choices.
“There is a common belief that accidents can’t be helped,” said Lisa McGowan, Education and Prevention Coordinator with the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Sask Central Acquired Brain Injury Services. “Even the word accident implies nothing could have been done to change that outcome.
“But the reality is that 90 per cent of the time, injuries are preventable. There is almost always something that could have been done to prevent an injury from happening. That’s the goal of the PARTY program; to prevent those injuries.”
Martensville High School (MHS) is scheduled to host a day-long PARTY event on Thursday, May 4. Grade 10 students will hear from a variety of speakers and learn about the causes and consequences of a wide range of injuries.
“It’s very much reality-based and experiential,” said McGowan. “What that means for students is they get a lot of direct contact with people who have lived experience of injuries, whether that’s someone who works in emergency services, such as a health care professional in a hospital; and also they’re hearing from people who have sustained an injury and come out on the other side.
“They’ll be hearing directly from people who will tell them about the difficult journey of recovering from serious trauma.”
McGowan said teenagers tend to remember lessons better if they have an emotional and experiential connection to the event.
“They’re at that stage of life, where their brains are still developing,” said McGowan. “What’s highly activated for teenagers is their emotional centres and reward centres, and they have a tendency to act in the moment. That’s not to say that young people can’t make good decisions, because they absolutely can.
“But it’s getting them to slow down and put that space between impulse and action; so that instead of making a choice that could potentially have a very poor outcome, they’ll make smarter choices and take smarter risks.
“The fact is that human brains mature from the back to the front, so we don’t become fully mature, reasoning, planning humans until we’re in our mid-20s.”
The students’ wake-up call is slated to come early Thursday morning, when they’ll be ushered outside the school to view the aftermath of a mock vehicle collision.
The victims of the mock crash, played by student actors, will be rescued, assessed and treated at the scene by Martensville Fire Department (MFD) first responders and paramedics with Medavie West Health Services. The RCMP will have officers on the scene to assist and investigate the ‘collision.’
MFD firefighters are scheduled to do an extrication of the vehicle to remove a trapped patient (a mannequin). The scenario is designed to be as realistic as possible to give the students a true picture of what actually happens at a crash scene, said McGowan.
“The mock accident scenario is about 40 minutes long,” she said. “It’s very visual and very dramatic, and it has a big impact on students. They’re seeing exactly what would go down if they were involved in a motor vehicle collision.”
She said the mock crash acquires added significance at this time of year, as high school students approach the end of the academic year and graduation celebrations get closer.
“After the scenario, they realize it’s a lot different than the sanitized version they see on television. People don’t recover from a coma and be walking around like normal a week later. It doesn’t go down that way.”
McGowan, who works with patients who have acquired brain injuries, said the “harsh reality” is that it takes weeks, months and even years to recover from that kind of trauma. And, she added, some people never do recover.
“Lots of people don’t survive serious injuries,” she said. “In Saskatchewan, motor vehicle collisions continue to be a concern for that young driver group. That’s one of the reasons we start out with that scenario.”
Following the mock crash, students participate in break-out sessions, each of which features a speaker from the health care or law enforcement sector.
“They’ll be talking about the different ways they’re involved in helping people that are injured,” said McGowan. “So students get to hear directly from people who relate true-life incidents.”
She added that the sessions include hands-on activities that give students a first-hand experience of what it’s like to live with, and recover from, an injury using adaptive devices.
The activities also include some instruction in assisting other people who are injured. For example, students will learn the basics of cardiopulmonary resuscitation on a mannequin.
At lunchtime the students will participate in a ‘disability awareness lunch’ where each student is given a ‘disability challenge’, indicating what happened and what disability they sustained, and then they have to try and eat their lunch while taking the challenge. This exercise brings the lesson home because hunger is a true motivator.
During the afternoon session, students will hear from an injury survivor,
“That’s a very emotional experience for the students as well,” said McGowan. “They’re hearing directly from the person who sustained an injury and how they’ve learned to cope; or from a family member of someone who has been severely injured and how that has impacted everyone in the family.. It really opens their eyes.”