Trauma Nurses Talk Tough

Not the trendy pick up spot I was hoping for, but the class was organized, easy to find and educational. Officer Brian was cute and the Nurse who spoke to us was very knowledgable. It really is interesting to hear a trauma nurse’s take on auto crashes. Two hours, twenty dollars and won’t have to pay the ticket or take a hit on my record. I plan to wear my safety belt and pay more attention when driving!

I love this class. I’m a CA driver. I have received about 10 seatbelt tickets over the years. HWY 15, HWY 110, HWY 101, HWY 99, you name the freeway, cops get me. I must be on California’s Most Wanted Seatbelt offender list. Well, I get my first seatbelt ticket in PDX, and they send me to Trauma Nureses Talk class. Very well done, very informative. Many real life stories, pictures. This class changed my life. I will wear a seatbelt from now on. Head trauma is total life trauma, protect you head.
I would like to see this class go nation wide

Another true confession: I’ve never worn my seatbelt correctly. As soon as I sit down, I tuck it under my arm and go about my drive. My first car had a detachable chest belt, and I always kept it off. To me, it’s as thoughtless as hitting a snooze button when you’re tired. So it might come as no surprise that I got busted for a seatbelt violation back on the Fourth of July. While riding in the backseat of a friend’s car. Maybe a minute after pulling out of the Plaid parking lot en route to a party. Bone-​cold sober. And it wasn’t so much that I wore the belt incorrectly. I just wasn’t wearing it. Yeah.
Click it or ticket, you idiot, you probably think. Well, sure, it’s catchy. In some nebulous capacity, you know it as a brainless action that could very well save your ass in times of trouble. But that part about brainlessness? Exactly. Well, as a marked gal of the Portland Traffic Court, I got to consider the buckling of the seatbelt in excruciating detail. In lieu of adding to the bloated coffers of the Portland court system, I got the option to attend Trauma Nurses Talk Tough, a seatbelt safety class, and pay the fee for the class instead. I may be reckless but I like money. So I seated myself with a pen and a notebook in an auditorium at Legacy Emanuel like any good student would.
First part of the class consisted of a police officer running through the legal side of why you should wear a seatbelt. The guy appeared confident with no particular need to appeal to any single person there, but he didn’t appear cocky at all. You could tell he had preached his part a bunch of times and answered dozens of related «Well, what if I did this?» questions. He joked about personally sending some of the invitations to a few people in his captive audience. He also stayed true to his word about taking away any cell phones that rang during the class and mailing them to the owners the following day. You can insert a doughnut joke here if you want, but I got the impression that the guy with the badge in that room just had a job to do. Then the trauma nurse who fielded the remainder of the lecture showed up, and I got a completely new appreciation for another kind of job.
You can imagine what that section of the class involved. Yes, there were horror stories and grisly photos and Australian-​produced (sidebar — do we not make these in the U.S.?) PSA’s that portray the various kinds of ways to lose control of a vehicle and suffer a range of consequences. That much, I expected. What I did not anticipate was hearing the litany of easily preventable ways that objects in your car, from the straw in your soft drink to the person in the backseat, can collide and in no uncertain terms, screw up your life and your loved ones’ futures. The description of a heart getting snapped off its aortic twig also caught me off guard.
The nurse who taught the class has been in the trauma field for 30 years. I’ve sure she’s seen everything and has a special shelf in her case of stories for Bad Decisions Made by Smart People. Despite all evidence on my bank account and in my journal, I consider myself to be a pretty smart person. I think most of the people I care about are intelligent and mindful individuals. But we all take risks, usually ones that barely register a ripple on our danger scales, and a lot of those risks don’t have rewards. Once I got past the more-​or-​less mandatory deduction of two hours of free time, what struck me the most is that awful, life-​changing things happen during car travel all the time. For real, despite the hokey factor. Why relinquish the intelligence I think I possess, that I think most people probably possess, by making stupid choices?
One more thing — the fee for the class goes towards securing cheap helmets and seatbelt education in elementary schools. Once again, a no-​brainer.