Great North Air Ambulance Service holds life-saving paediatric course


At the Great North Air Ambulance Service (GNAAS), we are constantly improving the level of emergency care we offer, and that doesn’t just stop at adult care.


Today’s training course aimed to provide doctors and paramedics with the expertise they need to ensure paediatric pre-hospital success.

We spoke to Jamie Walsh, GNAAS paramedic and training manager, on why this type of training is so important.

Jamie, what is today all about?

So, today at headquarters we are running a paediatric emergency anaesthesia and resuscitation course. We need to make sure that when we do have to attend paediatric jobs that our skills are up to date, and we also need to be fully aware of the main differences between adult and paediatric care.

Today is going really well and we have such great resources here at our headquarters, so we are really utilising them to help our guys gain more experience in this area.

Who’s attending the course?

This course is only for our internal staff – our doctors and paramedics. It’s a bit of a refresher as paediatrics isn’t something we see every day, but we need to make sure we are always maintaining our level of competence and knowledge in this area.

This is a course we hope to put on for external applicants and candidates in the future.

How is this type of training delivered?

This type of training is delivered in a number of different ways. Lectures make up a big part of the course as well as skill stations where we look at the equipment needed when we are on scene, dosages to give paediatric patients, and the differences between adult and paediatric care.

We also have scenarios and simulations going on involving children of different ages which demonstrate the different illnesses we can be met with on scene and how to deal with them.

For more information about training at GNAAS, please click here.

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