TOLEDO, Ohio — A group of physicians and nurses from The University of Toledo are traveling to Poland to lead a pair of Advance Trauma Life Support classes, offering training to Ukrainian doctors and other healthcare providers on how to better manage serious battlefield injuries.
The team, developed and managed by the American College of Surgeons, is trained in Advanced Trauma Life Support, which is intended for emergency physicians, surgeons and other doctors who regularly are confronted with trauma patients.
With Russia continuing its invasion of Ukraine, the war has forced nearly every physician in the country to be at the ready for taking on trauma cases, something many doctors have never handled.
“You’re asking physicians who don’t typically specialize in trauma to start taking care of trauma patients and teach others to be prepared for it," Cristina Alvarado, a registered nurse and director of immersive and simulation-based learning at UT, said. "They desperately need this training. They’re living it."
On July 16, Alvarado and the rest of the Toledo team will depart for the Medical University of Warsaw to provide the training for a mix of Polish physicians, Polish paramedics and Ukrainian physicians who are traveling from Bukovinian State Medical University in Chernivtsi, Ukraine.
"The goal of this trip truly is to give them the knowledge, training, education and the tools to not only handle traumas better, but teach others how to handle them better as well,” Alvarado said.
Among those who will participate in the training is Dr. Olena Korotun, a Ukrainian pediatrician and associate professor at Bukovinian State Medical University whom Alvarado knew through the medical simulation community.
"When it comes to me personally as a pediatrician and medical doctor, I want — I need — to be ready and confident to face trauma. It is an essential skill in my country today,” Korotun said. “Too many children have gone during this war already. We need to do all that is possible to not increase that number.”
Dr. Stanislaw Stepkowski, a Warsaw native who is professor of medical microbiology and immunology at UT, and Dr. Ivan Kaspruk, an emergency medicine resident at Toledo who is originally from Ukraine, will join the team to assist in translation.
Toledo’s team will be joined by physicians from the United States, Cyprus and the Netherlands.