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Paramedics use cadavers for life saving skills

Posted at 5:18 PM, Oct 24, 2016
and last updated 2016-10-24 19:18:58-04

Omaha paramedics are improving their skills to save lives.

Instead of practicing on mannequins like they have done in the past, they are using cadavers.The cadavers are lightly embalmed and doctors say they feel very similar to or just like a living person.

This type of training gives paramedics room for trial and error while practicing on a real body.

A team of paramedics are putting skills they learned in the classroom into action on a human body.

"It definitely makes it a little more real to go into and you have some hiccups, just like you do on a real life person,” say firefighter Julie Condon.

 Dr. Eric Ernest say practicing on a mannequin just doesn't compare.

"A lot of training with EMS is real relegated way of training with a mannequin, plastic mannequin, artificial tissue and things of that nature," said Dr. Ernest.

Dr. Ernest says they hold these real life sessions about once a year.

 "This gives them a chance to practice all the intricacies of how that feels, how that looks,  if they mess up here in the cadaver lab there's a kind of no harm, no foul in the sense that they can retry it," Dr. Ernest said.

He says the lightly embalmed cadavers offer a more life-like interaction similar to what happens in an emergency.

 "Being able to feel that tissue, how the needle goes in, how the tube goes in, they really have a strong connection with that feel," Dr. Ernest said.

Emergencies can happen at any given moment, so paramedics say these skills are essential.

“Sometimes you don't have the opportunity in the field regularly, but when the opportunity comes it’s good to be able to know and feel comfortable with what you are doing," Codon said.

The cadavers that the paramedics practice on are people who agreed to donate their bodies to science before their passing.