TRAINING
THE PARAMEDIC APPROACH The latest Dublin Fire Brigade recruits came through their paramedic training as Ireland faced a second wave of COVID-19. Course Director Karl Kendellen tells Adam Hyland how it was made possible.
“
T
his group of paramedics is a unique class,” Course Director Karl Kendellen tells me. “No other class in the history of Dublin Fire Brigade has ever had to experience this kind of training while under lockdown due to a pandemic.” These are indeed unusual times, and while these latest recruits did incredible work to ensure they were brought through fire fighting training during the first wave of COVID-19, paramedic training for these and other firefighters has had to be carried out under various levels of restriction, making their graduation just as remarkable. For a start, the class size was unusually large, with 56 on the course. “It was a huge class,” Course Director Kendellen agrees. “We had 43 coming straight in from the recruit class, plus ten personnel coming back from operations, and three external students from Dublin Airport Fire Service. As well as myself, we also had Eithne Scully and Ray Kearney as Assistant Course Directors, eight syndicate officers, and tutors, bringing the teaching faculty to 19. So, there were a lot of people involved, all of whom had to be kept safe and who had to follow very strict
regulations on distancing and hygiene that never changed even when the level of restrictions in the country were changing.” Although the class was made up of new members as well as those who had gained operational experience, all of them were more than familiar with the safety measures that had to be followed, and this ultimately led to the class completing the course during what were difficult times. “I think the operational lads had some exposure to how we could work under new guidelines because they were out in the stations,” Course Director Kendellen tells me. “Even though they weren’t yet trained as paramedics, they would still have been going to a lot of medical incidents on the fire appliances. So, they would have been familiar with the isolation techniques and the PPE. Those coming straight in from recruit training would have experienced how things had to work, and they knew no different, but there was some adapting to what we had specifically in place, and everybody fell into it very easily. “Obviously, there were issues from the point of view of how we would typically run a paramedic class and what we could and couldn’t do under the circumstances, but the students
just rowed in when they were asked to do something, or not do something, they facilitated everything as much as they could.” Starting in September, the course ran through to the end of November, with COVID-19 regulations easing at one stage before being reinforced over this period, and at the time of writing all are now in the supernumerary phase of their internship, serving four weeks as an observing third person on the ambulance. “This has been, and will be, an interesting time for them,” Course Director Kendellen says. “For those who came in straight from the recruit class, it has been a hard year. They got two weeks off after a very challenging recruit training course, before coming back in to the paramedic course, again under difficult circumstances. “It is probably harder for those coming back in from operational work, because they have gotten used to shift work, and had to return to Monday to Friday, which is quite restrictive. And it’s not really nine to five, because there’s a huge amount of reading and self-directed learning that has to be done, so it is full on, it completely takes over their lives for 12 weeks. “One advantage they have is that they have been out at cases and seen incidents – cardiac arrests, broken bones, soft tissue injuries – so they are able to put into context what they are being taught, whereas for those who haven’t yet had the experience, it is still very theoretical.”
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