AVI ASSIST TAKES AIM TO IMPROVE AIRPORT TRAUMA CARE ACROSS AFRICA IN 2015
(Posted 19th December 2014)
AviAssist, which is closely affiliated with the Flight Safety Foundation, is an independent, non-profit organization that seeks to inspire and promotes professionalism in African aviation safety. It does so in close coordination with ICAO, stakeholders and safety support providers as part of the Flight Safety Foundation family and has over the years conducted countless seminars and workshops across Africa to see their objectives come closer to reality.
For 2015 was a new focus added, being post incident trauma care for victims to prevent unnecessary loss of live or lifelong disabilities through immediate quality medical care.
AviAssist therefore yesterday made the following announcement:
We have entered into a five year corporate social responsibility agreement with UMCG Ambulance Services from the Netherlands for the delivery of a new course, the Airport Trauma Care Course (ATCC).
The ATCC will be a three-day course with the aim to teach a simple systematic approach to the management of trauma patients through interactive tutorials, skills teaching and simulated patient management scenarios.
‘We are very grateful for the partnership with UMCG Ambulance Services for this course, which ensures that we work with experts that share this operational responsibility on a daily basis with their colleagues in Africa’ stated AviAssist Director Tom Kok before adding ‘We are open for requests from the East and Southern African region to host our courses in 2015 & 2016’.
An Emergency Response Plan (ERP) is the backbone of an orderly and efficient transition from normal to emergency airport operations. Its production and regular exercise exposes pain points that could aggravate a response in a real emergency. The ERP is also a crucial part of an airport’s Safety Management System, a basis of standards from the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Medical services and the way an airport deals with the injured, or at present does not deal with them, are vital in meeting the requirements of the ERP.
‘A critical component in all this is the quality of care received from first responders and medical personnel. However, access to emergency medical training in Africa is a challenge. With this course, the AviAssist Foundation helps to address a shortage of trauma care training opportunities in the region’ AviAssist’s Director Kok said when explaining the Foundation’s choice for embedding this course into their programmes. The newly introduced course takes its inspiration from the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) curriculum.
The ATLS course is a training program for medical providers in the management of acute trauma cases, developed by the American College of Surgeons. Originally designed for emergency situations where only one doctor and one nurse are present, ATLS is now widely accepted as the standard of care for initial assessment and treatment in trauma centres. It teaches a simplified and standardized approach to trauma patients. The premise of the ATLS program is to treat the greatest threat to life first. Survivors should be classified to determine the order of priority for treatment and transportation.
A short video clip of the course can be found on the Foundation’s Youtube channel by clicking on the following link: www.youtube.com/aviassistfoundation
