My department just puchased the Kore kooler Rehab chair. As usual, they buy stuff because of one article or its the newest greatest thing out there. Not to down play the chair or product, just there isnt alot of information outside of the company that makes the chair about it. Which leads me to ask the following questions?

1) How many departments have this chair and do they actually used them on calls?

2) Because each firefighter is coming out of the fire sweaty and stuff, does the unit get decon before the next firefighter uses it?

3) If this is the cases what does your department use as its policy?

4) What would be the average supplies you would go through on a 1 alarm fire in rehab to supply this equipment.

5) How does this affect the turn around time in rehab?

 

Again, Im not against new products, and things to help us in the field, I just dont like the trial and error approach to fire scene rehab and management. I like the informed approach, because we all are having to do more with less personnel, and its sucks when your busting your ass inside, and 70% of the people on scene are in rehab?

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You need to talk to Peter McBride of the Ontario Canada fire department, he is one of the co-inventors of the chair. There is a lot of research behind the chair and it's use. I'm sure he can point you in the right direction.
We have chose to use five gallon buckets that we put a water ice mix in, then just have the fire fighters stick their arms in the bucket,it works very well. We have found that we can get a quicker turn around time at rehab, and you really can feel it cooling you from the inside out, very effective.
In the research I did for my former department the forearm immersion looked to be a valid method of cooling, the chairs make it easy for the tired guys to do, like putting water at the SCBA bottle exchange area, its there its easy they use it. As far as decon: for blood pressure cuffs you should decon between each use to keep from getting bad readings, but if the cuff is constantly wet from cleaner that can effect the readings too... I think use your best judgement in this particular decon situation. They are taking off (or should be) all their PPE bunker jackets and pants, before entering the rehab area (aids cooling) so the majority of contaminates will be left outside the Rehab area, sweat and blood from wounds to the responder will be you major decon concerns I'm guessing. As far as switching the ice and the water out...trial and error then do what works...if you can't get enough ice and water to change it out everytime...then that has to be a judgement call you make.

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