Sports trainers refresh life-saving skills in emergency training

BILLINGS – One of the most important aspects of your health is knowing what to do in emergency situations, which is why MSU Billings invited athletic trainers to teach those very skills Tuesday afternoon.

“I’ve been doing this for 47 years now, and every year there’s something new,” says Don Gleason, who now works as a volunteer sports coach.

Gleason has seen just about everything in his half-century as a sports coach, but even he was in class on Tuesday.

“We can’t practice enough because there are so many different scenarios to deal with,” he said.

The focus of the Sports Training Program’s emergency session is on providing care to injured athletes in rural areas where inclement weather is common.

“We’re out in nature where we don’t normally practice. We really have to think about and practice these important skills,” said Kylie Izzi McKinney, the program’s clinical coordinator.

Each year, McKinney teaches medical personnel in the athletic training program what to do in emergency situations in high school and college sports. These athletic trainers can be school nurses, firefighters, EMTs, or anything in between. Gleason worked as one of these trainers for over 30 years, and now he volunteers when needed.

While most emergency training programs focus on providing abundant resources, the sports training program focuses on emergency situations in real-world scenarios where resources are more scarce.

“In rural towns, athletic trainers are often on the sidelines. Even in our outlying areas around Billings, sometimes there are places where resources are limited,” McKinney said.

On Tuesday, McKinney helped these athletic trainers practice five situations in which an athlete could get injured during a game. One of those scenarios was a simple sprain, while another was an athlete going into cardiac arrest.

“The spectrum ranges from respiratory distress, respiratory disease, heart problems to cervical spine injuries, such as those sometimes seen in football games, and orthopedic injuries to the lower extremities,” McKinney said.

“Strains and sprains are the most common things. The real emergencies are rare, but they are the most important. Those are the things we train for,” Gleason said.

And this training will be life-saving at the start of the new school year.

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