Durham and Cleveland police firearms unit tactical team medics: lessons from the first six years

Abstract

Background. Since 2007 Durham and Cleveland Firearms Police have trained a small number of firearms police officers to an enhanced level of first aid qualification. This article reviews the history of this programme, the patient report forms submitted during the period 2013-2016 and analyses the types of incidents attended. Methods: 66 PRFS were interrogated and analysed from a four-year period between Jan 2013 and Dec 2016. There was a marked increase in PRFs submitted during that time. Over half the casualties were male, resulting from assault (15) 21%), road traffic collisions (14)19%) and deliberate self-harm (14)19%). The most frequent medical interventions were wound dressing and direct pressure, airway manoeuvres and Oxygen therapy. On-scene times with patients prior to handover to NHS staff ranged from 0->60 mins. 0-20 minutes (22), 20-40 minutes (15), 40-60 minutes (10) and >60 minutes (1). Discussion: This data shows that the TTMs provide a useful medical response often arriving before other medical provision is on scene. Despite the primary role being to respond to firearms trauma, officers have dealt with a range of medical scenarios and provided a range of interventions.

Responding to the marauding terror attack: the police perspective

“…This continued collaboration has cemented strong links with the larger military family and sees the regular involvement of specialist clinicians from all three services supporting the programme as an evolving teaching faculty, in addition to support from the pathology service (see Figure 3). The use of tourniquets, haemostatic wound dressings, chest seals and oxygen therapy is now commonplace and has contributed greatly to improving patient outcomes 5…”

“…One such study, ‘ Durham and Cleveland police firearms unit tactical team medics: lessons from the first 6 years ’,analysed PRF data collected over a 4-year period, as part of the forces’ TTM programme in support of their Clinical Governance framework 5. The evidence suggests that like many other similar programmes, police officer more often use their trauma first aid skills at incidents such as road traffic collisions, assaults or self-harm incidents rather than for the treatment of firearms-related injuries.…”

Decision-Making for UK Police on the Transportation of Casualties with Life-Threatening Injuries

“…First Official Journal of the Australian Tactical Medical Association(Hartley et al, 2017 andCarr et al, 2017). Both papers acknowledge that the numbers of PRFs examined are likely to be underrepresentative of the true number of incidents encountered by officers.…”

“…In their examination of 66 patient report forms (PRFs) submitted by Module 5 trained firearms officers in two forces over a period of four years,Carr et al (2017) found that on-scene times ranged from five minutes to over an hour. About half of the PRFs saw officers managing a casualty for up to twenty minutes, with the other half being between twenty minutes and an hour, but the reasons for this were not explored.…”