Ambulance staff in Boston have been given a greater opportunity to refresh their CPR training thanks to a kind donation from a hospital charity.
The Pilgrim Hospital Charity Shop has donated a Simbody Resuscitation manikin - which is a very realistic looking doll that is meant to resemble a human casualty - to give staff further local access to the training.
They have also donated a device called a ShockLink, which is linked to a real defibrillator via Bluetooth and simulates different types of cardiac arrests and visually demonstrates when that patient’s heart is in a shockable rhythm.
Scott Scoot, EMAS Paramedic at Boston Ambulance Station, said: “I wanted to create an environment where myself and my colleagues could access further refresher training where we worked.
"This dummy can be utilised in trauma and cardiac arrest education which means it will help us train newly qualified staff and prevent potential 'skill-fade' amongst staff overall.
"Staff can approach us if they want to brush up on their on their air management skills and we take them into the training room for twenty minutes to refresh those skills and then we can discuss how the session went.
“The support we have received from the Pilgrim Hospital Charity Shop helps us to continue to provide the best care possible to the local community.”
Sue Rivett, a volunteer and a Trustee of Pilgrim Hospital Charity Shop said: “We are so pleased with the service EMAS provides to the people of Boston, as well as Pilgrim Hospital.
“We were more than happy to help Boston Ambulance Station secure a resus manikin and we are grateful to all our generous donors who make all this wonderful work in the local community possible.”
Trustees and volunteers of the charity were invited to Boston Ambulance Station to observe how the manikin was going to be put to use as they witnessed a mock cardiac arrest in action and ask the crew questions.
Also in attendance was Pilgrim Charity Shop Trustee, Michael Clark who said: "It looks very realistic! It was quite shocking to see the body laid out as it looked like an actual human-being.
"I think the ambulance workers here are very thrilled with having this manikin because it gives them a realistic subject to work on unlike a plastic looking dummy which doesn’t create the emotion of a real life emergency environment.
"The manikin is worth £15,000 but the people of Boston have been very good towards the charity shop by providing us with donations and buying from us.
"We don't want to raise loads of cash for it to be sitting in the bank doing nothing when our vision is to provide equipment, like this manikin for EMAS, to benefit health in the local community."
With Boston Ambulance Station now in possession of this new state-of-the-art training equipment, there are future opportunities for collaborative training with other clinicians across the health sector.
Scott Scoot said: "In the past we’ve been fortunate in that the air ambulance in the area, critical care doctors in the ED and big teaching hospitals have invited us along to their sessions to train alongside them.
"We can now offer them to come and train with us and we can do it all together at a local level."
