As he watched the medical school’s newest students respond to a variety of emergency scenarios during the final day of Medical First Responder (MFR) training, J. Adrian Tyndall, MD, MPH, FACEP, the Hal B. Jenson, MD Dean, President and CEO of Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine (WMed), was reminded of his own journey as an emergency physician.
“Seeing you all go through this is an actual treat for me,” Dr. Tyndall told students in the MD Class of 2030 during the MFR capstone event at the Kalamazoo Regional Fire Training Center. “This is about the practical aspects of medicine, and this is something I hope you will carry with you throughout your education.”
The all-day capstone event was held on Thursday, September 3, 2026, and consisted of several emergency scenarios, including a mass-casualty incident, a vehicle extrication, responding to a half dozen complex medical emergency cases, and rappelling down a building.
“The teamwork that is so important to be successful in the MFR course is the same kind of teamwork that you need to be a successful physician and a successful healthcare team member,” said William Fales, MD, professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and division chief for the Division of EMS and Disaster Medicine at WMed. “While most of these students will not be going into emergency medicine, they are going to be doctors and it may be a patient who collapses in their waiting room, it may be a neighbor, or maybe a family member that needs someone to step up and do some simple, but really important things for the first few minutes of an emergency until help arrives.”
WMed students spend some of their very first weeks of medical school participating in MFR training. The two-week course equips students to respond when someone is ill or injured and provides them with instruction on basic procedures, including taking vital signs, CPR, airway management, oxygen administration, bleeding control, wound care and splinting, administering life-saving medications like naloxone and epinephrine, and assisting in childbirth.
The course culminates with the MFR capstone event, and the training qualifies students for national certification and state licensing as medical first responders. WMed is the only medical school in Michigan and one of only five in the nation to provide this type of training.
“We’re a little biased, but we think every physician should know how to handle the first five minutes of an emergency, regardless of what kind of specialty,” Dr. Fales said. “That’s what we really try to do in MFR.”