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SCARED SOBER

It is said that experience is the best teacher. Of course, you can't very well take every teenager, put them in a life-threatening vehicle collision to teach them that drinking and driving is a stupid thing to do.


It is said that experience is the best teacher. Of course, you can't very well take every teenager, put them in a life-threatening vehicle collision to teach them that drinking and driving is a stupid thing to do.

That's where the Prevent Alcohol and Risk-Related Trauma in Youth (PARTY) program comes into play. In Grade 10, as part of their mandatory wellness class, every Yorkton student participates in the one-day program that seeks to simulate the sequence of events that can occur when someone is in a bad auto wreck.

It's kind of like a scared straight program for everybody.

Wednesday December 12 began with presentations by Ryan Monette from Crestvue Ambulance Service, Deputy Fire Chief Trevor Morrissey and RCMP Cst. Hank Neumiller.

The lecture portion of the programs outlines, complete with graphic videos, the potential medical, social and legal ramifications of distracted driving, speeding and, most importantly drinking and driving.

The presenters also described how they go about saving lives when a wreck does occur, but Morrisey said the best way was through prevention.

"This is the best way to save savable lives right here," he said, referring to PARTY.

Predictably, none of the largely 15- and 16-year-olds present disagreed that drinking and driving is foolish. Yet, the leading cause of injury and death for people aged one to 44 remains traffic collisions and the number one contributing factor is alcohol.

And those in the age group of 15 to 24 are two-and-a-half times more likely to be killed in a car crash than the population at large.

Finally, Saskatchewan's rate of traffic-related injury and death is twice the national average.

Experts believe 90 per cent of traffic collisions are preventable.

"This program should be unnecessary," Morrissey said.

Following the presentations, PARTY becomes a hands-on experience for the teens.

First, Neumiller, Monette and Holly Poirier, Monette's partner, demonstrated how they handle someone who has been thrown from a vehicle. Two volunteers, Matthew McKee and Calin Bugera, were poked, prodded, man-handled and strapped into rescue apparatuses.

Then it was out into the deep freeze of a prairie winter wind where firefighters demonstrated the arduous process of extracting a victim from a car using the jaws of life. As toes numbed and noses ran, the presenters kept it personal, continually reminding their audience that it could be them in the car freezing while the emergency workers did their job.

When firefighters lifted the roof off the car, the teens gratefully rushed to get on the school bus for a trip to the Emergency Room.

The simulation continued as monette and Poirier rushed Annie, an anatomically-correct training doll, into the trauma room where E.R. registered nurses Koliann Schwaga and Karen Tratch demonstrated the steps taken to attempt to stabilize a seriously injured victim.


This is certainly the most graphic and powerful part of the PARTY program. The nurses said they get fainters all the time. True to form, as they cut off poor old Annie's clothes and proceeded to shove tubes into virtually every available orifice, it wasn't long before one student had to be carried out of the room by the EMTs.

A visit to the morgue is not a mandatory element of the program and several students exercised their option to decline.

For those who continued to the cool, forbidding bowels of the hospital, Tratch continued to personalize the experience, liberally using "you" instead of terms such as "victim" or "deceased" to describe the morgue protocols.

The next stop for participants was a presentation by Sunrise rehabilitation services. If you are lucky enough to survive, the original trauma is nothing compared to the long and torturous road back to health or living with a lifelong disability.

At this point, students participate in scenarios during which they get to experience what it is like to have a life-changing injury such as loss of limbs, changes to or loss of eyesight and the inability to swallow properly or speak.

Other aspects of PARTY include presentations by mental health and addictions professionals, injury survivors or family members of victims and Kopan's Funeral Service.

PARTY is definitely an impactful experience, but is it effective?

A 10-year analysis published in the Journal of Trauma-Injury Infection & Critical Care, suggests a statistically significant difference between a control group (non-PARTY participants) and a study group. There were 4.1 per cent fewer traumatic injuries in the study group. The gap was slightly greater for females at 4.6 per cent.

Of course, it is difficult to prove a negative (i.e., that something didn't happen as a result of a prevention program), but dozens of volunteers in the Yorkton program continue striving to save lives.

Kyila Puryk, PARTY site coordinator of Sunrise's Acquired Brain Injury Program, said it truly collaborative effort.

"The Yorkton PARTY Program is an awesome community event," she said.

"There are such amazing people that come together to make this all work, so I just wanted to make sure everybody is included and thank them for their dedication, both directly and indirectly in our community."