This Wednesday evening our regular training exercise took the form of some casualty care revision, following on from our Mountain Rescue Casualty Care Certificate course which ended earlier this year. (at least until we all have to repeat it to keep our certificates current in three years time)
As ever the fiendish trainers in the team felt they had to put us through our paces, and so invited Mark Hellaby and his colleague Ian down to the team, along with their ’special friend’, “Sim Man”.
Mark is a Clinical Skills Trainer with North Cheshire Hospital and is also a member of the ATACC Team (Anaesthesia Trauma and Critical Care Team from Cheshire).
Mark and Ian brought along with them an incredible computer-controlled very realistic looking casualty simulation manikin “Sim Man,” that could produce chest sounds for various disorders, various pulse types, measurable heart arrhythmias, could be shocked for real with a defibrillator, and many other such valuable facilities. Controlled by a handset, and costing around £6,000.00, “Sim Man” can even be programmed to die, so no pressure on team members faced with all of “Sim Man’s” technology to outwit their casualty care skills then !
The team members were faced with a fallen climber scenario – “Sim Man” had suffered serious trauma. whilst his real live friend Ian played the role of “Sim Man’s” shocked and injured climbing companion, both of course looked the part being rigged up in climbing harnesses and ropes.
For those surviving everything “Sim Man” could throw at them, the next session was taken by team member and trainee SARDA handler Alistair Greenough, who was present tonight utilising all his skills and experiences in his day job of being an Accident and Emergency Department Charge Nurse, to pass on valuable lessons to team members.
Alistair went through trauma scenario simulations using more traditional means, ie no high tech casualty simulation manikin to suddenly die on team members!
The third and last session of the evening saw our Medical Equipment Officer Mark Scott, (well known for his catch-em out casualty care exercises!) go over the stages of primary and secondary casualty survey, history-taking, and diagnosis, followed by practical work in pairs.
All of the exercises were overseen by Doctor Clare Whitney, who is based at Preston Hospital, lives in Horwich and is interested in supporting and possibly joining the team.
Also present throughout the entire evening was Carl Silver, (his photograph of Incident 92 currently adorns our website ’home page’), an amateur photographer who has kindly offered to follow some team activities and record events for us as and when he is available. Carl’s images of this evening’s proceedings are used to illustrate this article with his kind permission.
The whole team is grateful to Mark and Ian for coming along this evening with “Sim Man” and perhaps next time we meet him his only programmed injury could be a cut finger? No chance!
