Within Mountain Rescue England and Wales there exists the excellent Mountain Rescue Casualty Care Course, with an established syllabus and training materials.

Within the Bolton MRT all members are expected to undertake this comprehensive course, including its renewal at three yearly intervals.

For a large number of years now the team has arranged this course within the teams programme, alongside other regular casualty care training, utilising a mixture of in house and external instructors and helpers.

Our last course culminated with all the written and external exams in Spring 2008, since which date we’ve recruited many new members plus a small number of members had taken a course previous to the last one, and their renewal course was required.

This weekend the team has put on an intensive Mountain Rescue Casualty Care Certificate Course, commencing on Friday evening, all day Saturday and today. Additional training sessions have taken place prior to this weekend and are scheduled beyond this weekend. Including all the elements we add to the course which are not part of the national syllabus.

In total 16x team call out list members have attended this weekends course, under excellent instruction from team members Alistair Greenough, a very experienced A&E Nurse at Warrington Hospital, Mark Scott, the teams Medical Equipment Officer and MREW Opiate trained, who has done much to improve and consolidate our mountain rescue drugs knowledge and use. Dr Clare Whitney, a GP with A&E experience and Ana Toole, a Physiotherapist with A&E experience.

All our members who have attended this in house course are now preparing for the written examination paper, and the practical casualty care examinations covering medical and trauma scenerios.

Finally a big thank you to course participants Elaine Gilliland, Clare Whitney, Sam McKay and Paul Brain for the excellent food over the weekend that sustained all through the intensive sessions. Paul Brain the cake maker, now that was a little secret he’s kept from us!