YOG TO BENEFIT FROM SAF MEDICAL EXPERTISE

Proud to be the host city for the world's first ever Youth Olympic Games (YOG), Singapore is all set to welcome the numerous youth athletes from around the world as they converge in the lion city to create a sporting legacy.

Come 14 Aug, the inaugural YOG 2010 will see some 3,600 youth athletes between 14 and 18 years old vying for top honours in 26 different sports, ranging from aquatics to wrestling, held at various venues across the island.

And to ensure that the YOG proceeds without a hitch, the organising committee considers the safety and security of the athletes to be of paramount importance.

Working in synergy with the Ministry of Health, paramedics of the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Medical Corps will be on hand to provide quick and effective medical response should an exigency arise at the YOG.

"As the YOG is a sporting event, we'll probably see more of sports injuries sustained during the games including sprains and fractures," said Chief Army Medical Officer and Commander of the SAF Medical Training Institute (SMTI), Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) (DR) Chua Wei Chong.

"Our paramedics are trained to recognise these sports injuries, so the medical personnel on the ground will be able to identify the problems, provide medical support and transfer the casualty to the hospital."

With a proven track record in providing medical support and coverage for large-scale events like the National Day Parade, the SAF Medical Corps was roped in to be part of the medical support team at the YOG.

Determined to help make the event a success, the SMTI is training a total of 390 nursing students from Nanyang Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic and the Institute of Technical Education College East.

From 6 Apr to 16 June, 32 paramedic instructors from the SMTI are, in blocks of three days, equipping the nursing students with the requisite skills and knowledge to become competent paramedic assistants capable of lending a hand to the SAF paramedics at the YOG.

Over the three-day course, each student-volunteer will get to revise essential first aid skills, orientate themselves to the paramedic kit bag as well as ambulance equipment and features, practise the loading and unloading of casualties to and from the ambulance, and learn to identify and assess a patient's medical condition.

With so much to learn and much experience to be gained, it is no wonder that the role of the paramedic assistant is highly sought-after.

"The response was overwhelming - we had only 130 vacancies, but more than 140 students actually signed up. We could not accommodate all of them and had to turn some away," said the Deputy Manager of Clinical Development at the Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Health Sciences (Nursing), Mr Chan Chee Beng.

To be eligible for the position of the paramedic assistant at the YOG, the nursing students must be Basic Cardiac Life Support (BCLS)-certified, which means that they are able to perform BCLS on an individual suffering from a heart attack. They should also be senior students and must have basic first aid skills.

"Because this is the first time Singapore is hosting the YOG, I think it's a once in a lifetime opportunity and it's going to be a great experience. In school, we've already been taught basic skills so this training is more of a reinforcement so we are better equipped with the skills and can react faster to an emergency," said 20-year-old Suzanne Lim, a third year nursing student from Nanyang Polytechnic.

Likewise, fellow nursing student, Cecline Seah, is also looking forward to learning from the SAF paramedic trainers.

"I feel very privileged. I am actually quite interested in critical nursing and paramedic training involves dealing with emergency situations like what critical care nursing does, so I think I will benefit from this experience," she told cyberpioneer.

To ensure that the highest training standards are met, the SAF paramedic instructors are required to be of Paramedic Level 2 grade and above, which ensures that they are able to identify a range of medical conditions and administer some treatment before the causalities are evacuated to the hospital.

Prior to training the nursing students, the paramedic instructors underwent a two-day "Train-the-Trainer" course.

"We went through the refresher course conducted by Paramedic Level 4-trained instructors from SMTI. We have the knowledge but for some of us who are not instructors and are doing operations work, the refresher course helped to update us on the latest medical developments," shared chief trainer, Military Domain Expert 4 (ME4) Jiva Ananthan, who is also a medical operations officer at the 2nd People's Defence Force and a medical operations officer at the YOG.

The first in the series of several three-day YOG paramedic assistant training courses conducted by the SMTI kicked off at Nanyang Polytechnic on 6 Apr.