On Thursday 22 June, Paramedicine secondee Ben Sherwell and Lab Technician Mohammad Asaduzzaman facilitated the inaugural Mass Casualty Incident Simulation for the third-year Paramedicine students in the Darwin stream.

This simulation was developed by Shannon Macfarlane, Senior Lecturer in Paramedicine to address the Ahpra requirement for paramedics: ‘demonstrate an applied knowledge of emergency medicine for a mass casualty / major incident event.’ Although this has been successfully facilitated at Bedford Park for many years, this is the first simulation of its kind in the NT.

Students responded to a gas explosion in which there were 10 patients with a range of injuries. They were required to ‘Sieve and Sort’ these patients utilising the SMART Triage system and work together as a team to clear the casualties and get them to safety whilst thinking clinically about their treatment pathway.

A special thanks to NT staff Deb Boyko, Kerry Cole and David Newman and St John NT Paramedics Rhys Dowell and Tyler Jarman for their assistance with organising such a successful simulation.

On behalf of the team and the College, thank you to all the standardised patients who volunteered including the medical students ensuring this was a great interprofessional educational activity – the team look forward to running this exercise again next year.