(pictured above: Emma Vlossak surrounded by members of Bend Fire and Rescue)

“My only job right now is to breathe.”

That’s what Emma Vlossak told herself as she lay in a ditch off Alfalfa Market Road east of Bend, unable to move, after being struck by an SUV while riding her bike.

Now, nearly a year later, Vlossak is “alive, upright and can hold (her) children again” and, for that, she feels tremendous gratitude. 

Up until the day she was hit on her bike, Vlossak had experienced trauma primarily as part of a team that cares for patients with severe injuries. She spent 10 years as a trauma nurse, three years at St. Charles, serving in the emergency department, after that working as a house supervisor and as a nurse manager in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

When she entered St. Charles Bend’s Emergency Department as a patient last June, Vlossak was surrounded by people she considers family.

“I got to experience being cared for by my family,” she said. “These are the people I was in the trenches with. From the moment the fire crew picked me up to the time I was in recovery, I was surrounded by and cared for by our medical community, who are also my work family. Our caregivers and the Bend Fire crews do not just show up to work, they are deeply committed to the health of our community.”

This week, Vlossak shared her story as part of the first Trauma Survivors Day event at St. Charles Bend, where approximately 50 people including surgeons, nurses, emergency responders, clerical staff and others had a chance to connect with people who had needed their care.

The goal is for Trauma Survivors Day to become an annual event and to kick off a new Trauma Survivors Support Network for Central Oregon.

Meeting former patients is an important opportunity for emergency caregivers to experience connection and closure, said Michelle Brenholdt, St. Charles’ director of Emergency and Trauma Services for Bend and Redmond.

“We are here when patients are having their worst day, but we don’t get to see them when they are back having their best day,” she said. “To meet a survivor, that’s what fills our cups, knowing we played a role in it.”

Connecting with trauma survivors “is like therapy for us,” said Trauma Medical Director Dr. Marika Gassner, who saw one of her former patients, Richard Macias, at the event.

“To see Rich walk in doing so well, it’s enormous,” she said.

Macias was excited to attend Trauma Survivors Day so he could thank all of his caregivers. He developed a relationship with them during his long recovery after falling from a roof late last year.

“It didn’t feel like strangers were taking care of me. The people here, they felt like an extended family," said Macias, who now has 11 plates and 86 screws in his new rib section.

“I just have so much appreciation for everyone,” he said. “I’m so glad I landed here.”

To learn more about the program or to sign up to take part, email the St. Charles Trauma Program.

In basketball, there’s a big difference between shooting two free throws in practice and shooting two free throws in the final seconds of a game when your team is down by two, with fans screaming, hearts pounding and a championship on the line.

Similarly, there’s a big difference between practicing life-saving measures on a training manikin in a quiet classroom and practicing those same measures in a hectic and unpredictable situation with lives on the line.

Central Oregon Community College’s new medical simulation center can’t help you sink your pressure-packed free throws, but it will provide emergency health care providers across the region with incredibly lifelike training opportunities, narrowing the realism gap between classroom education and real-world trauma response.

“This is the next level of education that is going to help make people feel more prepared for these kinds of low-frequency, high-stress scenarios,” said Dr. Ryan Petersen, an emergency medicine specialist with St. Charles.

“The more ‘real life’ the scenarios are, the better the training, and part of that is the anxiety,” he continued. “That’s a hard thing to create, because when you feel like it’s fake, the anxiety is not really there. But when the manikin is crying and its eyes are rolling around or something, that’s when you feel like, ‘Wow, this is what’s going to be happening in reality.’”

The medical simulation center — colloquially known as a “sim” center — is a cutting-edge lab that provides experiential learning in specialty areas such as pediatric trauma, birth complications and mass casualty response. A partnership between COCC, St. Charles’ continuing medical education program and Cascades East Area Health Education Center, the sim center held its first training session for professionals and students in March.

That’s when Petersen, an emergency medicine specialist with St. Charles, ran a training on dealing with difficult airways. Afterward, he said every Central Oregonian will benefit from the innovative equipment and programming at the sim center because emergency response agencies from across the region will use it for training.

“I work closely with a number of fire and EMS organizations in the region, and a lot of the rural areas don’t have access to anything like this, so they’ll definitely benefit from it,” he said. “It’s just a great thing that St. Charles and COCC got together to provide this for the community.”

The center’s technology includes a high-fidelity birthing simulator with infant manikins and other innovative learning tools — purchased with a $350,000 grant from Oregon Health & Science University’s rural-focused Area Health Education Centers program — to be used by EMTs, paramedics, ER physicians, nurses and others from throughout the region’s rural-serving medical community.

“St. Charles is excited to build upon our relationship with Central Oregon Community College,” said Ellie Cuff, supervisor of continuing medical education at St. Charles. “This simulation center will provide a central location for training health care professionals from across Central and Eastern Oregon, and for preparing health care students to enter the workforce.”

The center, based in the college’s Cascades Hall, is being coordinated and taught in conjunction with COCC’s paramedicine department, led by David Schappe, EMT/paramedicine program director, who helped bring the simulation center to life.

March’s initial session prioritized training professionals in medically underserved communities. Attendees of the inaugural session included medical staff from AirLink Critical Care Transport, St. Charles and other health care entities — some traveling from as far away as Black Butte and Spray — as well as second-year COCC nursing students.

Petersen said he is excited to watch programs at the sim center grow and develop in the future.

“For my area of specialty, I’m just kind of touching the surface of what we can do. The scenarios you can run there are pretty much endless,” he said. “It went fantastically, and I think word is going to get out about what awesome training is available and it’s just going to get bigger and better.”

The simulation center’s trainings are being held quarterly, with the next session planned for June. For more information, contact Schappe at 541-383-7751 or [email protected].

St. Charles Health System’s Trauma Services team is taking life-saving Stop the Bleed training and tourniquet kits to local schools and businesses this fall, thanks in part to money donated at the St. Charles Foundation’s Saints Gala fundraiser in 2019.

That year, the event raised money to benefit the trauma program, which provides injury prevention education and help for those who suffer traumatic injuries in Central Oregon. Donors at the event gave around $250,000 to the cause.

Trauma Services has spent some of that money on things like upgrading the Bend hospital’s trauma rooms and a new ultrasound machine. Now, the team is ready to relaunch Stop the Bleed training after more than two years off because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“With a focus on injury prevention outreach, we are using some of the money we have left to purchase Stop the Bleed kits and get them out into the community,” said Jeremy Buller, trauma program coordinator for St. Charles.

Stop the Bleed trains, equips and empowers people to help others who are injured following a traumatic event. It is part of a national campaign organized by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

St. Charles regularly receives requests for the training from local individuals and organizations such as Bend-LaPine Schools and the Bend Chamber of Commerce, Buller said. Those requests have increased since the Aug. 28 Safeway shooting on the east side of Bend, he said.

Shootings can cause traumatic injuries, of course, but the majority of traumas in Central Oregon happen as the result of car crashes, falls off bikes and e-bikes, camping accidents and other everyday occurrences, Buller said.

“Hemorrhage is the number one leading cause of preventable death in trauma patients,” he said. “So the things we see on TV aren’t necessarily the reason we do this training. It’s more likely that you’re going to run across a need for this while you’re running an errand or you’re out on the trails.”

Training sessions are currently planned in November and December at Mountain View and Bend Senior high schools and the Bend Chamber, with more to be scheduled. Soon, Buller hopes to relaunch training that’s open to the public, and Stop the Bleed is now being taught as part of Trauma Services’ standard CPR education.

The department is also using the Saints Gala money to buy Stop the Bleed kits, which contain a tourniquet, gauze, gloves, scissors, a pressure bandage and more. They give these kits away for free as part of the training.

“The goal is to have these kits readily available in the event you run across someone that is experiencing life-threatening bleeding,” he said, “and to train as many people as possible on how to use them.”

If you have any questions about our Stop the Bleed classes, contact our Trauma Team via email.

Trauma and acute care surgical services

Our Trauma and Acute Care team of surgeons and advanced practice providers serves nearly 1,700 trauma patients annually — around a quarter of which are pediatric — with one of the most extensive coverage areas in the continental U.S. spanning from the Columbia River gorge, east to Idaho and down into parts of Northern California. St. Charles Bend is the only Level II trauma center east of the Cascades, while St. Charles Redmond, St. Charles Prineville and St. Charles Madras all hold a Level IV trauma center designation.

Our services include definitive trauma care for severely injured patients with 24/7 support from the AirLink and LifeFlight Critical Care Transport helicopter and fixed-wing airplane, as well as ground ambulance service.

St. Charles Trauma Prevention Program

St. Charles Bend is a Level II Trauma Center, the only one east of the Cascades. St. Charles Redmond is a certified Level III Trauma Center, and St. Charles Prineville and St. Charles Madras are Level IV Trauma Centers. We have one of the most extensive coverage areas in the continental United States spanning from the Columbia River Gorge, east to Idaho and down into parts of Northern California. Our hospitals are affiliated with AirLink for emergency transportation. We serve nearly 1,000 trauma patients annually – around a quarter of which are pediatric. Our services include definitive trauma care for severely injured patients with 24/7 support from the AirLink Critical Care Transport helicopter and fixed-wing airplane, as well as ground ambulance service. 

Community Outreach Programs  

Trauma Nurses Talk Tough (TNTT)

Trauma Nurses Talk Tough was developed in 1986 by three trauma nurses who wanted to put an end to the carnage they saw every day as a result of unnecessary injuries and deaths. TNTT empowers people of all ages to take control of the risks in their lives by teaching them simple ways of changing their behavior. The program is aimed at individuals or groups associated with programs such as driver education courses, court-ordered classes that include DUII and safety belt diversion and family education programs. 

Stop the Bleed (STB)

Our instructors will teach you live - in person, using training materials specially developed to teach bleeding control techniques. They will not only instruct you, they will be available to check your movements as your practice three different bleeding control actions. They will keep working with you until you demonstrate the correct skills to STOP THE BLEED and save a life.  

• What you'll learn 
  • What stops bleeding? In a STOP THE BLEED course, you'll learn three quick techniques to help save a life before someone bleeds out:
    • (1) How to use your hands to apply pressure to a wound;
    • (2) How to pack a wound to control bleeding;
    • (3) How to correctly apply a tourniquet. These three techniques will empower you to assist in an emergency and potentially save a life.  
• How long is a STOP THE BLEED course? 
  • Our STOP THE BLEED courses last no more than 90 minutes. A formal presentation is followed by hands-on practice of applying direct pressure, packing a wound and using a tourniquet to stop bleeding.