Tony Mather from EMAS training school kindly attended RAF Cranwell to spend the day with our volunteers and provide training in line with the new First Response Emergency Care (FREC) pathway. This is the new standard of EMAS training, with all new members of the scheme now following the FREC pathway. Saturdays training was to capture those already qualified, but bring them inline with FREC also.
A very busy but enjoyable day started with 3 and 12 lead ECG placement and acquisition. Skills such as this are invaluable for the scheme as it can greatly increase the handover time frame from our responders to front line crews that arrive on schene to back us up. Although we are not trained to interpret ECG, we can have a 3 and 12 lead carried out prior to the crews arrival, potentially reducing treatment time.
Next up we went through Major Incident Response including 10 second triage. 10 second triage was introduced after a number of major incidents in recent history, as a way for the Emergency Services to improve their responses alongside the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles (JESIP). The method is Fast, Systematic and battlefield-tested. Originating in military medicine, where it dramatically improved survival rates in battlefield trauma, its success prompted civilian adoption and is widley used today.
Rounding the day off we spent time looking into maternity. A very sensitive subject as always but no less essential. Although, as a scheme, we don't attend maternity calls, as history shows not all jobs we attend are as described, so an insight is essential, more so for supporting the paramedics that arrive on schene.
All our responders have received training in all areas above previously, however a refresher is always useful and welcome, and brings us inline with the FREC pathway.
We would like to pass our thanks on to Tony for giving up his weekend, to all our volunteers for attending and RAF Cranwell for their continued support of the scheme, providing us a room for training.
