3D printers breathe life into medical training

When damaged or blocked airways stop a patient breathing, medics can cut through the cricothyroid membrane and insert a valve to make an alternate airway in the throat.

CAPTION: A 3D-printed training aid, created at the MakerSpace at Latchford Barracks, helps instructors teach how to perform a cricothyrotomy – which involves cutting through the cricothyroid membrane and inserting a valve to make an alternate airway in the neck. Story and photo by Warrant Officer Class 2 Max Bree.

This procedure, known as a cricothyrotomy, was added to the medic’s scope of practice two years ago, but training aids were hard to come by and replacement consumables expensive.

Increasing costs quickly became a problem for instructors at the ADF School of Health, and with nothing available through the Q system, one instructor, Sergeant John Bray, found a solution.

Listening to a podcast by an American doctor who specialises in teaching the procedure, he learned the doctor had created a free 3D-printable training aid.

Sergeant Bray took the designs to the MakerSpace at Latchford and spent the next few days printing different components.

“It was a case of print it off, glue it together, find something to use as a piece of skin and you’re ready to roll,” Sergeant Bray said.

What emerged was a head on a hinge that flips back and exposes a piece of rubber used to simulate skin over a plastic trachea.

“You slice through that fake skin to get to the trachea so you can insert an airway and ventilate with a bag-value mask,” Sergeant Bray said.

The procedure can be needed following explosive blasts, burns or any injury that causes trauma to the head where an airway is blocked.

Instructors replace the training aid’s skin with skin from worn medical mannequins, but everything else is permanent.

“We’ve been using it on the CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) health course since July last year, where it’s getting thrown around. In the rotary-wing aero-medical evacuation course it’s been stepped on a few times; it’s actually pretty durable,” Sergeant Bray said.

He next plans to use the MakerSpace equipment to create an improvised explosive device noise simulator to make a blast sound to trigger the start of a trauma scenario.

“The people that are running MakerSpace are happy to help out, but they’re more interested in helping people learn to do it themselves,” Sergeant Bray said.

“It’s not there for people to go in and ask the staff to print off knick-knacks; they’re helping personnel to learn the technology.”

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