Wednesday, August 30th, 2017 St. Stephens Fire Department hosted a special training program for its members and other emergency service representatives. The special guest speaker for the training evolution was Jeff Hinshaw and his crew. The topic was Player down, Youth Sports Injuries Education through the Children’s Institute for Pediatric Trauma. Jeff Hinshaw is a physician assistant at Wake Forest Baptist Health and is also on the medical staff at Wake Forest Athletics. Jeff’s education and training includes a B.S., at Wake Forest University, P.A.-C at Wake Forest University School of medicine, a M.S., at West Virginia University and a NC EMT-Paramedic.

The training was sponsored by St. Stephens Fire Department and Catawba Valley Community College. This training was valuable as it related to providing medical care at the first responder level to injured youth participating in sporting activities. The main focus of the three hour class was injuries related to youth football players. Hands on training was provided to simulate a real incident. A total of 39 students attended the class and it was a joint training exercise conducted by several agencies. The agencies included members of St. Stephens Fire Department, St. Stephens High School, Catawba County EMS, Claremont Rescue, Hickory Rescue, and Alexander Rescue. Jeff is planning to provide a rescue kit, for football gear removal, to the agencies that participated. These kits will be placed on the responding apparatus to assist with medical and sporting injuries on the football field. This training and equipment is valuable to the Rescue Squads in Catawba County because they provide the medical standbys for all the football games in the middle schools and high schools. Hickory Rescue also provides this same medical coverage for the college football games at Lenoir-Rhyne University.

We would like to thank St. Stephens Fire Department and Catawba Valley Community College for providing refreshments for the class, Catawba County EMS for providing the ambulance and equipment, and St. Stephens High School for providing the football players.