Knkrescue.com News Updates

EMT Training & Development

Clinical Updates

New Sponsorship

New Awarding Organisation

DIscussions are underway with the view to establishing an 'Awarding Organisation (AO)' in Thailand to develop & oversee a range of new training courses & programs. These will be available to volunteer & paid personnel initially in Khon Kaen and Bangkok.

Courses under review at the moment include:

Intermediate Life Support (ILS)
Pediatric Intermediate Life Support
Advanced Trauma Care
Scene Management
MILS - Manual In Line Stablisation (management of a patient with potential spinal injury)
Vehicle RTC Extrication
Major Incident Management

The AO will be run as a not for profit Foundation & will be developing a new qualification framework for EMT's to undertake as supplementary training to the existing EMIT EMR & EMT-B qualification framework.

Clinical Practice Guidelines

As part of our training and development revision is taking place, we will be developing, in conjunction with colleagues in the health sector, a series of Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG's). A CPG is in simple terms an instruction protocol for how to deal with a specific condition, for instance CPR, determining in a step by step process what actions need to be taken & what happens next, based on various outcomes & variables.

We are currently writing the CPG's for:

Adult Cardiac Arrest
Pediatric Cardiac Arrest
Hypoglycaemia
Stroke
Sepsis

The first of these will be online for discussion in the early part of 2024.

Proposed Skills Framework

Under the existing qualification framework, a volunteer can only progress to be an EMT-B. We are proposing to build on the existing EMT qualification framework, introducing a three-tier qualification that will build upon the initial EMIT EMT-B course, developing the range & scope of both underpinning knowledge & clinical practice.

We are in discussions with a number of Foundations, and stakeholder partners from the private healthcare sector & overseas training providers, as part of the process of designing an outline training framework, Clinical Practice Guidelines, assessment processes &registration of training centers.

If you are interested in contributing to the discussion, please contact us. We'd love to hear from all interested parties.

Watch out for updates.

Use of long boards & collars

There has been considerable debate regarding the use of 'long boards' for transportation of a patient to hospital. Peer reviewed research has clearly indicated that doing so is of detriment to the patient & should be avoided where possible.

The use of a long board for extrication and rescue is still in common use in Thailand by both volunteer ambulance crews & hospital EMS teams. Research in 2001 suggested that a patient should be removed from a longboard within 2 hours of admission to hospital due to the risk of pressure sores & spinal cord compression.

However more recent research published by the 'Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine' has identified that the use of a longboard entails risks which have the potential to increase the risk of injury & recommends that the scoop-stretcher is used instead, with ideally a vacuum mattress being used to 'package' the patient.

In the UK & across Europe the use of longboards for routine transportation of a patient has become a thing of the past.

The use of Cervical Collars where also looked at & it was reported that they can increase intercranial pressure. It was also identified that they can be problematic when it comes to managing a 'difficult airway'. It was also found that '...the addition of a rigid collar did not result in improved movement restriction in volunteers already strapped to a rigid stretcher with head blocks...'. The routine application of a collar should be discouraged.

Where a patient is able to do so, within certain parameters, they should also be encouraged to self-extricate from a motor vehicle - this will be the subject of a future article.

PAX Bags

We are pleased to announce that PAX Bags have agreed to a sponsorship deal which will see us receiving a range of their bags for use on our ambulance.

PAX are one of the leading bag manufacturers based in Europe and their kit bags are reflective of the needs of pre-hospital care providers.

As part of an exclusive deal with them, we will over time purchase additional kit from them as our service expands.

We hope to take delivery of the new bags in the early part of 2018 & these will in turn be taken out to Thailand for immediate use!

Futher details and photos will be online soon.

Training Certification warning:

There are certificates being issued by a company claiming to be an American Heart Association registered training provider in Bangkok.

These certificates are invalid and the certificates are invalid.

If you are planning to undertake an AHA BLS course, check the AHA website to ensure the company offering you training is registered & therefore entitled to run the course. Simply having an instructor with an AHA registration number is not sufficient to run the course.

Please be careful when spending your hard earned Baht on a course. Check that the course, the company, the venue & the trainer are all registered.