BEHCHOKO/RAE-EDZO
Behchoko is now better ready to handle medical emergencies.
By working on a small mannequin, Robert Simpson learns how to treat an infant during an emergency medical responder (EMR) course held recently in Behchoko. - photo courtesy of Tony Clarke, Arctic Response Canada Ltd.
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That's following the recent delivery of an emergency medical responder (EMR) course.
The three-week course was delivered by Yellowknife-based Arctic Response Canada Ltd. to the ambulance service of the Tlicho Community Services Agency.
The training was led by Tony Clarke, the industrial safety lead instructor with Arctic Response Canada.
"In some cases it was people who were already employed by the ambulance. They were getting their skills upgraded," said Clarke. "Other folks were candidates who might be interested in joining the ambulance or who the ambulance indentified as being members of the community, for example, who might respond to an emergency whether it's in the community or on the highways."
The training started on Feb. 27 and concluded on March 21.
Clarke said the 120 hours of training covered a wide variety of topics, such as bandaging a minor wound, assessing a patient, dealing with medical conditions such as an allergic reaction, learning how medications affect the body, extricating a patient from a vehicle accident or plane crash without using the jaws of life, identifying hazards and counteracting poisons.
Seventeen people participated in different phases of the course.
"We typically run it as a normal Monday-to-Friday cycle with homework assigned every night," said Clarke. "So in the end, they do about 112 hours in the classroom, and they probably do an additional 40 to 45 hours of homework."
The instructor said there is a difference between EMR training and First Aid training, which is designed to keep a situation from getting worse and allow time to call for an ambulance.
"The EMR program is you're the ambulance," he said. "You're the ones being called to the scene of the event. You have to basically be able to make a whole whack of decisions very rapidly and effectively in order to keep the patient alive."
Clarke said one of the skill sets that EMR training provides is dealing with spinal injury, such as when someone has suffered a head and neck injury as a result of being thrown from an ATV or being involved in a car accident.
"It's a hardcore course," he said.
At the end of the course, participants do practical exams in which they are presented with a problem and have 30 minutes to deal with it.
"We do two of those and then we do a written exam," Clarke said. "If they meet the requirements for passing the course, then they get a certificate of completion as an emergency medical responder."
Clarke said course participants in Behchoko included people already working in the field as ambulance attendants, but not certified to work as EMRs. "So they're operating as drivers for the ambulances, not the back. So now this allows them to go work in the back."
If participants wish to apply to be licenced after the training, they can do so in jurisdictions such as Alberta or British Columbia, where there are licensing requirements for the profession. That process would mean another set of exams so they can call themselves EMRs and use those letters after their names.
