Innovation On Lake Washington: UW Rowing's W.E.T. Program
December 21, 2017 | Men's Rowing, Women's Rowing, Rowing
SEATTLE – In recent years, AEDs (automated external defibrillators) have become more and more commonplace.
The devices, which allow anyone to provide life-saving assistance to someone suffering from a cardiac emergency, have shown up at stadiums, golf courses, shopping malls, health clubs – anywhere where groups of people gather. The devices, through voice commands, allow the user to quickly diagnose an improper heart rhythm and, when necessary, provide electric shock to attempt to revive someone suffering from sudden cardiac arrest.
While the public access to AEDs has become more common, their availability to athletic programs – at all levels – has also become the norm.
But, how does that work for a rowing team? How does it work if the victim of a cardiac incident is on a large body of water.
Together with local police, fire and medical personnel, the boating community and team physician Dr. Henry Pelto, the UW rowing team has taken the step of establishing a thorough, but simple, plan to deal with any such emergencies on large bodies of water – Lake Washington, Lake Union and the various other places the UW rowers find themselves practicing each day. They call the program W.E.T. (Water Emergency Training).
"This puts us at the forefront of on the water safety," UW men's coach Michael Callahan said. "Huskies have been innovators since the Conibear Stroke, Pocock Shells, training and now emergency cardiac science."
"A fairly standard pillar of athlete medical care is emergency planning," says Dr. Pelto. "It's really well researched that if you get to people early and start CPR, every minute you miss that, people's chances of surviving go down."
The UW medical staff, coaches and student-athletes in all sports have been trained on what to do in emergency situations, be they in practices, workouts, or at games.
"Every year we rehearse everything," Pelto explains. "Basketball games, volleyball, football for sure, soccer fields. All of the staff come together and looks at where the ambulance will pull up, what are our hand signals and stuff like that. There have been procedures like that put together for the boat house, but we have never done it for the water."
To that end, the medical staff, UW coaches and local authorities set about coming up with procedures for on-the-water emergencies, addressing all of the various challenges associated with giving aid to someone in a rowing shell.
"Being on the water, in a shell, raises so many different issues and obstacles," Dr. Pelto explained. "How do you even get to somebody? How do you pull them out of the boats? Then what do you do with them when you get them on the boat? Do you wait for someone to come to you, do you take them to a dock, do you take them to Conibear? So we wanted to really refine that and make sure that we are as efficient and effective and communicative as possible so we can deliver that care to any athletes that have this happen to them out on the boats. "
Simply put, the idea is to remove the rower from their shell onto a coaches' launch where the AED can be put into use, if necessary.
"There are singles, pairs, one-person, two-person, four-person, eight-person boats, so how do you get people out of those different ones, which we ran through," Pelto said. "There are essentially two different types of launches we have for the coxswain and coaches launches. One has a flat deck on the front, which is pretty intuitive. You can hold the deck up to the side of the boat. The rowers look at the bets way to move the oars to get to the rower who is down.
"The other type of a launch is a pontoon, which is much harder," Pelto continued. "You pull up to it and there is a big square of water in front of you. We took video to show the best approach to get to these things."
Together with local fire and police, the Huskies trained their rowers in the various scenarios and recorded videos of each for future training.
Also, UW coaches' launches are each equipped with AEDs, made possible by the David McLean '66 Scholarship endowment. Dave passed away of cardic arrest, and his son, Pete, works for a company that manufactures AEDs. The company donated the equipment and started the endowment in his name.
The next step, devised by the UW team, is to get the patient to the closest possible pick-up location, where an ambulance or other first responders can be waiting to treat the victim and/or transport them to a hospital.
For that, the team researched local dock locations and devised a map showing the various spots around Lake Washington and Lake Union that are most easily accessible to EMTs.
"There will be a map in each of the launches, and you can look at where you are at in the water roughly and know where the closest dock is," Pelto said. "We have made sure it is accessible and EMTs and they know that is where they're going to go. The way the emergency plan is laid out is that they are going to call 911 and say, 'we are going to this dock, 'and on the map the address is listed so fire can get to there as fast as possible."
What's more is that all of this work that the Huskies and the other agencies have done will also benefit anyone else who would like to use it. Local rowing clubs will be given the same maps and, if the occasion arises, the same type of aid can be given to anyone on the water who might need it, be they a rower, a kayaker or a pleasure boater.
Additionally, the UW will make all of this available for any other rowing program that might want to implement a similar plan for themselves, anywhere else in the world.
"This is an amazing team effort and that embodies what rowing is all about," Callahan said "We are very fortunate to have a cutting-edge medical clinic attached to our department that is also innovating from football helmets to best practices on the water.
"Seattle Fire and Police have always been at the leading edge of emergency medicine and Seattle is one of the hubs of AED technology," Callahan continued. "It all came together in this project. It not only makes Washington Rowing safer, but allows others to use this as a successful model."
"We want to make this broadly available," said Pelto. We don't want to have this be some hidden UW thing. Almost all of the boathouses and clubs have emergency protocols, but they are largely what happens at the boathouse. We just didn't see much other than standard water safety. There were no technical details about how to get someone out of a shell and the finer details of where you are and how do you meet up with EMTs."
Now, thanks to the innovation of this big group of rowers, coaches, doctors and local emergency personnel, there is.
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