HSJ Awards 2015: Improving outcomes through learning and development

Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance – From education to clinical excellence: a chain reaction

This Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance funded post graduate programme, run in partnership with the University of Hertfordshire, the South Western Ambulance Service Foundation Trust and representatives from local hospitals, has improved paramedics’ knowledge and skills. 

Training is delivered on-site at the charity’s airbase rather than in the university classroom. It aims to increase paramedics’ patient assessment skills, widen their knowledge of drugs, improve their diagnostic abilities, advance their management of pain and help them make better clinical decisions.

A group of eight paramedics and eight doctors deliver the training both at the airbase, on the helicopter and within their own trusts. 

Eighteen months of collaboration has been recorded in detail on a shared learning database called Basecamp, which contains all the lectures, articles, education and competencies that have been achieved.

A new tier of paramedic has been established within the South Western Ambulance Service Foundation Trust: critical care paramedic.

The body said the biggest impact was the increase in land crew requests for the air ambulance – as they knew the clinicians now had additional skills and expertise.

Judges praised the collaboration and said stakeholder involvement was a critical factor in the success of this scheme.