COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — The Arnold Sports Festival is expected to bring 20,000 athletes from around the world to central Ohio this weekend, with many of them ready to compete in strenuous competition.
Central Ohio medical professionals met on Wednesday to go through possible emergencies at the festival and how they will be handled, participating in hands-on simulations.
Dr. Ben Bring, the medical director at the Arnold Sports Festival, said they have spent months preparing for this event.
“Athlete safety is the number one important thing for us,” Bring said.
Each year, the training changes based on the events happening and also as a challenge to the staff.
“So a lot of high-risk events,” Bring said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of combat sports as well. So we’ll see anything from biceps ruptures, pec ruptures, patellar tendon, quad tendon, those have happened over the years. We’ve also seen a lot of neck injuries, too.”
The teams started with a simulation of a cardiac event. They used the scenario of it happening at the featured strongman competition.
“There’s going to be an actual patient that you can defibrillate and actually provide an electrical shock to, so we do everything from the first encounter with the patient to actually getting them off to the hospital with Columbus Fire,” Dr. Brad Gable, the assistant medical director for simulation at OhioHealth, said.
Personnel also practiced what to do if there is an open fracture.
“We do it exactly like you’re going to see it in real life so there’s going to be actual bone sticking out,” Gable said. “There’s going to be actual bleeding.”
The doctors said they have also mapped out key exit points and where each ambulance will be located. Officials said it is also a chance to work through communication kinks between athletic trainers, Columbus Fire officials and others involved.
“We call it crew resource management, where you have role designation about who’s responsible for which aspect of this, who’s responsible for the crowd control, and making sure that the patient and the victim are safe,” Gable said.
They say they hope they don’t need to use this training but if they do, they will be ready.
“We always say, ‘Iron sharpens iron,’ so that’s what we’re always trying to work for,” Bring said.
More than 100 medical professionals will be on duty for The Arnold throughout the weekend.