People aren’t the only ones who are put under anesthesia at Heartland Regional Medical Center, and PETA has taken notice.
The animal-rights organization recently contacted Heartland by e-mail, then through a letter, asking that it stop using live cats in its pediatric advanced life support, or PALS, course. Heartland uses cats rather than mannequins in training because cats’ airways and the challenges to intubate their vocal chords are almost identical to those in an infant.
“There have been times the validity of the program has been called into question, but I can tell you both from a mother’s and a nurse’s perspective how important it is,” said Heartland nurse Mary Kieffer.
Her now 16-year-old son, Ryne, was treated in an emergency room at 4 months of age by medical staff who had recently been PALS trained. Because they were able to revive him after rotavirus caused breathing difficulty, he came through the illness without repercussions, she said.
Today, Ryne’s story is one that Sharon Smith, Heartland emergency department associate team leader and director of the PALS program, sometimes tells during PALS courses.
“With a mom on the back of your shoulder saying ‘Can you save my baby?’ you don’t want that to be the first time” a medical professional attempts to intubate a very small airway, Ms. Smith said. “We have folks that come from a four-state area and beyond because they want that live airway training.”
Because PETA requested PALS stop using cats before its June course, Heartland thought the organization might send protesters Wednesday, when the course took place, said marketing and communications coordinator Marcy George. No protesters came, but even if they had, Heartland has no plans to discontinue a practice it sees as beneficial all around — not only for PALS students and the pediatric patients they may serve, but also for the cats.
“People who have also been trained on mannequins always say how real it is with cats,” said Gene Bradley, ambulance director for Pro-Med EMS in Falls City, Neb., and a PALS instructor who sometimes teaches at Heartland.
He added that if emergency responders don’t practice on cats, “they don’t get to have that experience unless they’re in an emergency situation with an infant. On a mannequin, you can’t see the open and shut with each breath or the cough reflex when something touches the vocal cords.”
Heartland offers six PALS courses each year and uses four cats at each. The cats, which are all about a year and a half to 2 years old, come from a USDA research farm and are placed under anesthesia for about 40 minutes while students practice intubating them. St. Joseph veterinarian Ron Palmer has been the attending veterinarian at the courses since Heartland began offering them 25 years ago, administering the anesthesia and monitoring the cats’ vital signs while they’re under it.
Afterward, he vaccinates and spays or neuters the cats before they’re adopted, often by Heartland employees. Any that aren’t adopted go to an animal shelter where they’re kept — never euthanized — until someone adopts them.
Wednesday, three of the four cats were spoken for even before the course’s morning session was up.
“They’ll all be adopted by the end of the day,” Ms. Smith said. “I guess that’s some of the reward I get. Forty minutes of service, and they’re off to a much better life.”
Erin Wisdom can be reached at ewisdom@npgco.com.