MAT Kosovo’s New Training Locations: Lakes and Rivers
January 23, 2019
World Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in Monte Carlo
June 21, 2019
Considering the review of International Mine Action Standards (IMAS) 10.40 to improve medical first responder care in the industry, MAT Kosovo EOD & ERW Training Establishment has teamed with ‘Iqarus’, a specialist UK medical training provider, to deliver the first fit for purpose Humanitarian Mine Action (HMA) Team Medic Course, with the next course running in June 2019. The course qualifies trainees to deal with any emergency scenarios; medical and trauma, with limited kit. It requires no medic background, whether you are a doctor, a nurse, or a deminer. The purpose is to preserve life, prevent further injury, and promote recovery.
This course is designed for Humanitarian Mine Action and EOD professionals with a special interest in Emergency First Response and Medicine in Remote Areas specific to the injuries sustained in hostile environments with delayed evacuation response.
These skills, basic and simple, yet significantly decrease mortality rate. Once the medic stabilises the casualty on the ground, and then transports evidence, chances of survival plummets. Among the skills taught at the HMA Team Medic Course is the use of tourniquets, wound packing with and without the use of haemostatic agents, airway management the use of simple manual manoeuvres; adjuncts such as nasopharyngeal, oropharyngeal, supraglottic airways and surgical airway. In addition to those clinical skills, the course covers the latest circulation guidelines in fluid management and clinical skills such as cannulation and the use of intraosseous devices, the use of a pelvic binder and traction devices and also how to adapt simple items when equipment is not available, all of which follows the latest guidelines in trauma management.
Most importantly, the course covers blast injuries; the physics involved within an explosion and how it affects the body and how to manage injuries and evacuate casualties.
As a means of promoting self-aid within a demining team, trainees are also taught the use of self-aid to EOD trainees at MAT Kosovo Training Establishment. In case of any emergency, the whole demining team should have a basic knowledge of how to stabilise a casualty during medical evacuation to the casualty collection point. Accordingly, trainees had to teach the use of tourniquets to the EOD level 3 trainees who are also taking part in their final exercise. This allows trainees to gain experience being in front of a group of people, teaching a skill as to the deminers in their own team and allows them to assess the application.
Once the training course is completed, a hyper-realistic high-pressure medical scenario is carried out so that trainees put all of these new skills to the test giving them confidence that, when present in a real-life accident, they would be able to perform calmly and methodically.
By the end of the course, trainees to see what medical equipment is out there to use, learn how to use it and most importantly why they are using it. The course builds up trainees from whatever level they are at with sound knowledge to keep them safe, test their performance under stress and pressure, and give them the confidence to be able to go out and deal with any incident whatsoever. That is as much to do with command and control as it is with clinical skills. Obviously, we hope that these skills will never have to be used for real; however, as an employer, manager, team leader or a deminer, you want to know the medic on site is capable and ready regardless what happens.
