A group of Indiana firefighters gathers around a man sporting a nose ring. The situation looks harmless until they comically pretend to remove the ring with the "Jaws of Life."

The scene is part of a new training video starring members of the Schererville Fire Department and directed by a nurse with more than two decades of emergency room experience.

Scott DeBoer, a flight nurse with the University of Chicago Aeromedical Network, has witnessed a growing trend in emergency rooms: body piercings. Lots of them.

Removing the assorted rings and barbells with dangerous, unsanitary tools can be tricky and "a legal nightmare just waiting to happen," DeBoer said. DeBoer teamed with the Fire Department to create a training video as part of a new kit aimed at educating medical professionals in the safest ways of removing body jewelry.

"It really is a new market for emergency medical responders, we're seeing," Fire Chief Joe Kruzan said.

DeBoer's kit comes with two instructional videos, a step-by-step handbook, some sample jewelry and a set of ring removal pliers. The package helps dispell some medical myths, including the right time to remove jewelry for X-rays and surgeries, DeBoer said.

Paramedics and EMTs have to meet certain time requirements in training classes to be certified each year, and DeBoer's project provided a unique chance for them to fulfill those requirements, Kruzan said.

"You can discuss airways until you turn blue, no pun intended," Kruzan said. "You can only spend so much time discussing the same subject."

Med-Pierce, a division of DeBoer's Peds-R-Us in Dyer, will market the kit to hospitals, paramedics and jails, where a person arrested has to be admitted with "nothing that the good Lord didn't put there," DeBoer said.

Kruzan said he expects his department will use the training it received, even if it means now being able to help his young daughter unhook her earrings.