A local STARS Air Ambulance team is getting ready to showcase their emergency medical skills at an international competition – representing Saskatoon for the first time.

Jenny Thorpe and Matthew Hogan have been working together for more than six years. They will be the second team from Saskatchewan to represent STARS in the Air Medical Services 2018 Sim Cup, taking place in Phoenix, Arizona.

The team has been training about once a week since April for this year’s competition. To earn their spot, they beat out the other teams from Saskatoon, and later, the teams from the five other STARS bases in Western Canada.

“We’re very proud to come from this base,” said Hogan, a flight paramedic.

“Both Jenny and I started six and a half years ago. With our practicing over the last five or six months basically every single person in this base has helped us in one way or another – so it makes us pretty proud to represent them.”

The international competition involves working through simulated emergency cases within a limited amount of time. Much like their day to day work at STARS, they won’t know what situation they’ll be working with until they get there, but according to Hogan, they can often be intense.

“The simulations they put us through, they really try to ramp up the stress and really overload us,” he said. “So I think that helps when we do get to some of the busy calls that we can respond to, it helps us slow things down and treat our patient.”

Thorpe, a flight nurse, says the simulations help develop communication, which is crucial in succeeding in the competition, but also in improving their abilities as a team.

“When you have a chaotic environment, (communication) is very, very important so that you’re not missing any pieces of the puzzle,” she said. “It also helps everybody in the room know where you’re headed with your treatments, and everybody’s on the same page.”

According to Thorpe, the intense competition will help them be better prepared for real emergency situations they might encounter on the job.

The team will be traveling to Phoenix over the weekend, with first round of simulations beginning Monday.