SMART@Scene

Safety Management And Rescue Techniques @ Scene

This advanced 3 day course is designed to develop on-scene skills and draws upon the strengths of a multi-disciplinary faculty, which immerses participants in a range of highly realistic scenarios often using live casualties.

The course builds on candidates’ medical skills providing a series of short lectures with the emphasis on practical sessions covering RTC, entrapment, trauma and environmentally challenging scenarios and workshops routinely with a multi-agency perspective.

Pre-Hospital care can be a complex, dynamic and demanding environment. The SMART@Scene course helps immediate care practitioners of any discipline to understand each others roles, increase medical and physical rescue considerations and improve on-scene decision making. This course is designed to cover the aspects of immediate care provision where patients are trapped due to a range of circumstances and is constantly updated.

In the same way pre-hospital care is evolving with interventions such as RSI and other advanced medical skills. Rescuers have evolved to meet the challenges seen in new vehicle design and safety systems with the application of modern approach to extrication.

Despite the complexities however, the old adage of “keep it simple” applies and the course negotiates the fine line of what is ‘nice to know’ and ‘need to know’ for candidates. An example of this is the use of “Time not Terminology”. Simply giving a time frame for extrication - 1 minute, 5 minutes, an hour – should mean the same to a clinician as it does to a rescuer.

Designed by an extrication specialist this course is delivered by a faculty of pre-hospital instructors drawn from several disciplines, having extensive experience as medical and rescue practitioners as well as being experienced instructors.  The combination of enormously experienced faculty with passion for their subject helps create the powerful learning experience.

The course is held in the Peak District and makes the most of the surrounding facilities. It should be noted that regardless of the weather, the course involves a large amount of outside practical sessions and candidates must bring full PPE and be prepared for the ever-changing weather challenges the Peak District has to offer. 

Course length:

3 days

Course content includes:

• Scene assessment & safety 
• Mechanism of injury 
• Patient assessment 
• Special circumstances in trauma
• Hazardous materials & environments 
• Communication 
• RTC extrication Phases
• HGV & PSV
• Bariatrics 
• Services & agency overviews
• Considerations for terrorism events 
• Air Incidents 
• Rail Incidents 
• Confined space 
• Water & flood considerations 
• Mass casualty events 
• Multiple Scenarios

Pre-requisites:

• Minimum age: 18
• Candidates require full PPE for full involvement
• Candiates must have experience in responding (contact us for details on minimum experience levels)

Qualification valid for:

3 years

Accommodation & meals included. 

Candidates Review

The SMART@Scene course is designed for both immediate medical care practitioners and fire service and rescue personnel. Together they can experience and learn advanced rescue and extrication techniques whilst furthering their understanding of one another’s roles. This course far exceeded all expectations, enabling participants to increase swiftly in knowledge, awareness and understanding of the wide variety of issues surrounding scene safety and extrication.

The course curriculum is extremely well thought-out, with great attention given to the detail of the programme and running order. Short lectures were used appropriately for introducing new concepts (such as the six key phases of RTC management and extrication routes), which were then consolidated with practical hands-on sessions in small teaching groups. The aim of each session was always clear - after exemplary faculty demonstrations of each skill, ample time was then given for a supervised participant practice and any questions. Individual areas of knowledge and skills acquired early in the course (such as vehicle stabilisation and glass management) were then utilised and amalgamated throughout the rest of the course to enhance our understanding of scene management as a whole, creating an awareness of the variety of techniques available for extrication.

An impressively comprehensive range of content was covered throughout the course. Topics were well-chosen to provide participants with a valuable basis from which to approach any rescue scene. Participants were given inspiration for further reflection and study (and in some cases, further specialist training!) by the discerning insights given into particular specialist rescue fields (e.g. rope technique and formation in water rescues, or limitations imposed during bariatric extrication).

The course culminated with several real-time, highly realistic, road traffic collision trauma scenarios, from which participants were able to consolidate the skills they had learnt by taking on different roles in each scenario. The opportunity to undertake scene management and rescue in a different professional role to usual, is rare. Consequently this course enabled its’ participants to greatly increase their understanding of each others’ roles and responsibilities. This was also an excellent opportunity to take stock of how much had been learnt in such a short space of time; the pace of the course was very well-judged (always moving forwards, never rushed) enabling a huge amount of ground to be covered in just three days.

SMART@Scene is an extremely well-equipped course, where participants had access to, and tuition in, the appropriate use of a wide variety of kit and equipment currently used in rescue and extrication scenarios. There was also a seeming endless supply of cars to extricate one another from! The venue was very well-suited to this purpose, with plenty of space both inside and out for practical sessions. There was also a variety of terrains and obstacles for additional challenges in different scenarios. As this course is heavily subsidized by sponsors, these good facilities did not come at any additional cost to the participants. Consequently, SMART@Scene represents unparalleled good value for money.

There was an exceptionally good ratio of faculty to participants on this course, and all faculty members were highly credible with years of experience in pre-hospital medicine and extrication. Without exception, they demonstrated extensive knowledge of extrication techniques and scene safety, as well as a great enthusiasm for communicating the importance of these subjects to the participants. This enthusiasm, backed by excellent presentation skills, carried-over and encouraged participants to further their understanding of the subjects at hand. Throughout the course, and after the course had finished, all key points could be consolidated by using the comprehensive and well-presented accompanying course materials.

I have absolutely no hesitation in highly recommending the SMART@Scene course to any fire and rescue personnel and any medical or paramedical personnel intending to work in a pre-hospital environment. This hugely enjoyable course delivered invaluable understanding of scene safety and knowledge of extrication techniques. I’m sure it will continue to have a positive impact on patient care for years to come.

EB - Consultant Emergency Medicine