LUBBOCK, Texas (KCBD) – For students preparing to work in health care, being ready for the unexpected isn’t a choice, it’s a requirement.
At Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, future doctors, nurses and first responders participated in a simulated disaster scenario designed to test their ability to make critical decisions under pressure.
The scene feels authentic because it’s meant to. Patients call out for help. Teams move quickly, assessing who needs immediate attention and who can wait.
“Please don’t touch it, it hurts too bad,” one simulated patient says.
“Ow ow ow ow,” another cries out.
Students must work together, making rapid decisions while managing multiple casualties at once.
Johnson says the exercise emphasizes more than medical skills, it’s about how teams function when opinions clash.
“At the end of the day you can find yourself needing help you want a team that talks to each other. So today we really try to emphasize, prioritizes as a team that results in a disagreement. What do you do when your team disagrees. That is a learning outcome for when your in practice. That’s what is so important,” Kyle Johnson, executive director of simulation at TTUHSC, said.
Actors add emotional intensity to the scenarios, forcing students to maintain focus even when situations escalate.
“Please shut up. Don’t talk about my baby like that. Your baby is driving me crazy,” one actor shouts during the simulation.
“Do you know what hit you miss? No?” a student asks while assessing injuries.
Students from different disciplines, medicine, nursing, emergency services, collaborate on patient care, mirroring how real-world emergencies unfold.
Lydia Timmons, a TTUHSC student, says that diversity strengthens outcomes.
“If you have five people all from different backgrounds and you have learned different things that’s so much better for the patient than it is for 5 people of the same specialty that kind of knows the same thing. Seeing all that come together for the sake of getting a patient feeling better,” Timmons said.
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