New EMS Training Center Opening in Texas
The 10,000-square-foot Mabee EMS Training Center located in Grand Prairie includes a hangar for helicopter training, a vehicle bay for ground ambulance training, patient simulator labs, and classrooms.
Officials from CareFlite, a medical transport company serving roughly 5.8 million people who live in north Texas, are scheduled to open the Mabee EMS Training Center on Jan. 11 in a dedication ceremony held at the facility in Grand Prairie, Texas. The new training facility will host academies to provide training and continuing education for CareFlite's ground and air ambulance crews, as well as Texas and Oklahoma first responders who need training. The new, 10,000-square-foot facility includes a hangar for helicopter training, a vehicle bay for ground ambulance training, patient simulator labs, and classrooms.
Jim Swartz, president and CEO of CareFlite, said he expects more than 1,000 students per year to be trained there. "It has state-of-the-art human patient simulators, state-of-the-art audio/visual equipment, three simulator labs," he said Jan. 9. "It's amazing to me how many companies send their people to us for training."
"I think we have the best location right in the heart of the Metroplex," he added. "We have a big educational program, and we thought it was time we had a facility to match what we want it to be."
The facility cost between $3.5 million and $4 million, he said.
CareFlite has presented the Emergency Care Update conference for the past 30 years. It can issue continuing education credits to nurses, EMTs, and paramedics. He said the training previously was done in rented warehouse space using cadavers; the human patient simulators cost around $100,000 apiece and are much more versatile, Swartz said. "Simulator training is the best kind of training you can do. We can simulate all kinds of things -- we want people to figure it out."