- We're here in Boston at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
And we're about to get a crash course
in how to deal with a medical emergency in space.
I'm terrified.
(coughing)
(alarm beeping)
Smoke seems to be going down so
and the alarmed stopped so we should be-
- [Operator] Shutdown so it doesn't overheat
and cause more problems.
- Okay.
NASA astronauts go into space
when they're at their peak physical ability.
But like the rest of us, they can still get sick
and when that happens it's not as if
they can just drive to the hospital.
Astronauts in low Earth orbit,
like those on the International Space Station,
still have constant contact with ground control
if there's a medical emergency.
A flight surgeon can talk them through it
and provide professional expertise.
Astronauts flying to Mars won't have that luxury.
They'll need to solve emergencies
on their own without much help from Earth.
And that's why we've come to the Stratus center.
It specializes in medical simulations
from doctoring robotic dummies
to using virtual reality to practice microscopic surgery.
Stratus received funding from NASA
to build its own space craft sick bay
where they run medical emergency simulations.
While astronauts are currently trained
in basic medical procedures,
this program is focused on how teams should behave
during a medical emergency on a deep space mission.
And what it will take to work autonomously
without constant support form ground control.
So, what I love about this center is that, you know,
we're in a regular old hospital hallway
and then we turn here and we're in space.
- Incredible right?
- I have to hand it to you all,
it looks like you ripped it straight out of a sci-fi movie.
- Well, thanks.
We had a lot of input from experts,
from NASA and it's based on the Destiny module.
So it's the same, kind of heighth and width.
So it feels compact just as in space.
- [Host] Right.
Weight is such an issue for launching.
- [Steven] Yeah.
- So how did you decide what tools you would need?
You know, what are some of the basics that you have to have?
- Weight load is a huge concern and even things like fluids.
We use a lot of IV fluid in the hospital,
it's so heavy to take fluids.
- Right.
- [Steven] So, you can't really do that
and so we've got basic cardiac kit, a respiratory kit,
like a first aid kit that you would have
with bandages and gauze and so on.
It's a limited resource healthcare environment.
- [Host] So I suit up for the simulations.
We're gonna run through three of them, a common emergency,
a dire medical emergency and a full out meltdown situation.
The common medical situation we dealt with first
was cardiac arrhythmia or an irregular heartbeat.
- [Operator] How are her vital signs?
- The pulse ox is 96 and heart rates about 140.
Blood pressure is 128 over 70
- Okay, can you get an EKG?
- So the stickers, it tells you where to put them.
So right, left, upper and lower.
- Scared for her.
- [Operator] I'm looking at the images
from the monitor right now and I think you're gonna
need to give her some medication.
- One, two, three, medicines in.
So, we got a pause on the monitor.
And heart rates back, it's slower.
I think we're good, she's looking much better.
- Oh, we did it.
I think.
(laughing)
Next, we faced a more dire medical emergency.
Ripley had a collapsed lung
and I got to try out my shot giving skills.
- [Operator] You just go right in
and you should hear a rush of air.
- [Brett] Looks like his oxygen
is maybe a little bit better.
- We were really thinking of how does the crew deal
with these events in a semi-autonomous or autonomous way.
If you have an acute episode and it's 20 minutes to wait
for a response from the flight surgeon on the ground,
you don't have that functionality.
- You need the answers now.
- You've got to do it.
So the crew then has to work autonomously.
- [Host] But we're lucky in these simulations.
We have communication with ground control
to help us through these trainings.
And good thing too because our last test
we faced a critical emergency, toxic exposure,
plus a ship malfunction on top of that.
Hi, we have an alarm going off.
It looks like we have a leak, maybe an ammonia leak.
An issue with the ship causes a toxic ammonia leak.
We need to put on our personal protective equipment.
- We still have time.
- We don't have time for that.
- [Operator] It looks like
your solar panels are overheating.
- Oh okay.
On top of all of this,
one of our solar panels starts overheating.
Which we have to address for the safety of the entire crew.
- [Operator] You need to get that solar panel shutdown
so it doesn't overheat and cause more problems.
- Okay.
- [Brett] Okay, I'm in the process
of getting that going.
- [Operator] Alright?
- Okay.
- [Female Astronaut] What should we do about this?
- Okay hold on, can we put the solar panel on pause.
We need to talk about Ripley.
- No, we can't put that on pause.
- Okay, so what does Brett need to do
to isolate the solar panel problem.
- [Operator] So he needs to go into control three.
- Go to control panel three.
- [Operator] Section J.
- Section J.
- [Operator] Alright.
- Okay, that's scenario over.
- We failed!
These simulations help teams practice better communication
and learn how to work together efficiently under stress.
If you're dealing with a new emergency you don't want
to be figuring out how to work together at the same time.
- In an extraterrestrial environment simulating things
before they actually occur,
figuring out the ergonomics of how you take care of patients
under very challenging circumstances is a real opportunity
to improve the care that we provide potential patients
in a space mission.
- And you can't really go to space
all the time and practice.
- Unfortunately you can't go to space all the time
to practice so doing this is at least the beginning of
the work towards improving
the quality of care in space medicine.
- [Host] No astronauts have gone through
these simulations yet but Stratus plans
to do more behavioral studies
and improve their sick base simulations.
And their methods could be incorporated
into astronaut training some day.
So I think it's clear that
I have a lot more medical training I need to do
before I'm equipped to deal with
one of these emergencies in space.
I think its clear that NASA does too.
They're gonna have to do a lot of simulations
like this one before they send astronauts to Mars.
NASA is still many years away from sending crews
into deep space but when that time comes,
simulations like these will be critical to training crews
to work together so that they'll be able
to handle emergencies without much help from home.
- [Doctor] We can hook him up to our monitors.
Make sure that he's doing well and stable.
- I feel like he's judging us.
- [Doctor] He's very non-judgemental.
- Okay, good.