Charity Insights

So after four weeks, today is my last day in the St John Ambulance office here in Bristol. This final week was all about writing my project report, which I have now completed and sent to my project supervisor for feedback on any changes that may need to be made.

My project looked at the duties/events covered by St John Ambulance and the types of injuries treated. It also looked at areas where volunteers wanted more training or felt the training they received could be improved. The results and findings have been included in my report (waiting for approval before attaching a link to it as the report contains some potentially confidential data). However, here is one of the graphs produced:

The graph above shows the percentage of duties/events covered by category in South West Region during 2015. Duties were classified into one of four categories as follows:

• Low intensity indoor events e.g. Pantos, Films, Theatre Performances, Musicals
• High intensity indoor events – e.g. Martial Arts, Dance Competitions
• Low intensity outdoor events – e.g. Fetes/Fayres/Carnivals, Country Shows, Fundays
• High intensity outdoor events – e.g. Football, Rugby, Motorsport, Equestrian, Racing, Running, Cycling

What’s the relevance of working out the percentages of events covered you may be thinking..? The idea behind calculating percentages was to allow first aid training to be more focussed and specific to the type of events covered. As the data was broken down further into the districts and even further into individual units, it allowed me to see what types of events were being covered and in what proportion. For example, for one unit, 81% of events covered were low intensity indoor events and therefore the recommendation was made that first aid was focussed around the types of injuries/conditions that are most likely to occur as result. Similarly, another unit had over 50% of events covered as high intensity outdoor events, which were mainly equestrian or rugby events. Therefore the recommendation in this case was for first aid training to focus on neck or spinal injuries – as they were commonly associated with such events.

A wider range of topics were addressed in the report and evidence was put forward to support my proposed recommendations for changes/improvements to the training. These will now be put forward to the South West Region Management team, hopefully with some positive results, although of course they are by no means obliged to implement any of the recommendations!

The Charity Insights Scheme has been a great opportunity to experience a workplace environment, particularly a 9-5 office job, and for any future students reading this and thinking about applying through the Charity Insights Scheme, I would highly recommend doing so! I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my project supervisor, Des Young, as well as all the other staff in and around the office who have helped me over the past four weeks to achieve the aims of my project. A special thanks also to Jessica and Barnaby for giving me the opportunity to carry out this project!

The end of this project does not mark the end of my time with St John Ambulance however. I will still be out and about either in Bristol or London continuing to help provide first aid cover at events and I will continue to be in touch with Des and the regional team to take forward the findings of my project.

Thanks for reading – hope it’s been interesting!

Read St John Ambulance – Final Week in full

Time has flown by and it’s hard to believe it’s nearly the end of the penultimate week! It’s been a promising week with significant progress having been made:

• I finished extracting the relevant data from DIPS for the fifth and final district within South West Region and plotted the graphs to present this. There is a lot of data that I’ve collated, so I need to consider how best to present my results when I start to write my report.
• The survey I created has been distributed via the South West Region mailing list with great results. After the slow response initially, I’ve now had over 100 responses, which is much more than I had anticipated!
• I’ve worked through each of the surveys to pick out the comments/improvements that volunteers would like to receive in their training and this will be included in my final report. It’s really interesting getting the perspective of other volunteers from all areas of the region as it highlights specific areas of the region where more focussed training on a particular topic could be implemented. It also shows what’s going well already, but also what more could potentially be done for volunteers.
• I’ve had a few more training programmes back from unit managers across the region, although this is still fewer than I would have liked. However, the training programmes I have got are really useful and again it’s interesting to see the similarities but also the differences between the training delivered to volunteers across the South West Region.
• I’ve also kindly been given specific injury data for 3 major running events held in Central District (Bristol 10k, Bath Half Marathon and Bristol-Bath Marathon). It was intriguing to see the nature of the injuries that St John Ambulance treated and as a result led to me researching further information about the most common injuries, not only to further my first aid/medical knowledge but also to create a training presentation specific to running injuries. Having spoken to some current volunteers and after viewing the online training folder, it was apparent that currently there isn’t a bank/source with resources that units can access to deliver first aid teaching. Therefore, I’ve put together a presentation with the most commonly treated running injuries, with the long-term vision that further presentations/resources may be put together into a general resource bank that anyone can access to further their training. I feel the running injuries presentation may be useful to a wide range of units, as having looked through the duties covered throughout 2015, running events are covered all over the region so the information would be useful and applicable to volunteers out on duty.
• I’ve also met up with both my project supervisors to update them on my progress so far. They’ve also been able to get me specific injury data for the ‘Mid-Devon Show’, and having looked through the injuries treated, it highlights the importance of first aid training with respect to bites, stings and allergies as these accounted for over a third (36%) of the patients treated. I’ll be meeting with them again this afternoon hopefully to discuss the final report.

Heading into the final week, my focus will be on writing the report and presenting my findings. I will also look to put forward suggestions for training development as per the survey responses.

Read St John Ambulance – Third Week in full

Hello again from another sunny day in Bristol.

The online platform DIPS is temporarily down, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to provide an update on my project over the past week. This week I have continued where I left off on Friday, with good progress having been made. I have extracted the data from DIPS for four of the five districts in the South West Region and entered it into my spreadsheet allowing for more graphs to be plotted/drawn. I am currently working on extracting the data for the final district and will have this all done by tomorrow (hopefully DIPS will be back up and running soon!). During the week I have also created a survey (by district) for all volunteers in South West Region. The main aim of this survey is to gain the volunteers’ perspectives of the first aid training they receive and where they feel it can be improved (if at all). So far I’ve only had 10 responses, but hopefully the link is going to be published in the regional newsletter so that will lead to greater coverage and an increased number of responses! I am aiming to be able to analyse the results of the survey next week as I start to pull the results together for my final report. I have also contacted the unit managers within each district to ask for their unit training programmes. I have had a couple of training programmes through so far, and am hoping to receive some more in the coming days, which will allow me to then compare the first aid training that volunteers receive to the first aid they have actually had to provide whilst out on duties.

After spending the whole week in the office, you’d think I’d take a break from St John related activity, however, that was not the case. Over the weekend Bristol hosted it’s 35th annual Harbour Festival and St John Ambulance were at the forefront providing first aid treatment for the thousands of visitors that came to enjoy the Harbourside at it’s best. In between responding to calls, I met volunteers from across the region and this was a great way to develop my project! I was able to explain my project and its aims to some of the unit managers out on duty but also speak to some members of the clinical and assurance team. This was particularly useful, as subsequently, I have been able to obtain data for all of the events covered by South West Region in 2015 with an overview of the types of injuries that occurred, the treatment provided and information about the discharge of patients following treatment. Aside from furthering my project, I did also develop my first aid and medical knowledge; learning about the different types of skin tear, the importance of taking a history (particularly with head injury patients) and dealing with some less cooperative patients.

I also met my project supervisor whilst out on duty at the Harbour Festival and will be meeting him tomorrow to go over the project so far and discuss further plans for the next couple of weeks!

Read St John Ambulance – Second Week in full

Hello from sunny Bristol!

St John Ambulance (SJA) is the nation’s leading first aid charity, training over 400,000 people on life-saving first aid skills every year. SJA volunteers provide first aid cover across the country for all sorts of events, big and small, as well as working alongside the NHS in responding to 999 calls.

I have been with the organisation for over 14 years now, starting at the age of six when I joined as a ‘badger’ (the name for SJA’s youngest members). I then became a cadet at the age of 10 and I am now currently an operational first aider, helping to provide first aid treatment to thousands of members of the public at various events. Each year SJA as an organisation treat many thousands of casualties, with the South West Region treating over 2400 patients during the 5579 events covered in 2015.

The aim of my project is to analyse the injury data from the events covered in South West Region during 2015 to identify any patterns or trends in injury occurrence which may help SJA to reflect how volunteers are trained going forward. I also intend to identify high-risk events where particular injuries occur, with the vision of providing more specific training to volunteers in these areas, allowing for the optimal care and treatment of our patients.

During my first few days so far I have been using SJA’s online platform ‘DIPS’ (Duty and Information Planning System) to trawl through hundreds of events covered by Central District (one of the five districts that make up South West Region) and extract the information I need to fulfil the aims of my project. Having created a spreadsheet of the data, I have been able to present this data visually in the form of graphs and charts, which will be included in my report detailing the results/findings of this project. Tomorrow, I need to contact the unit managers across the South West region to ask for their first aid training programmes (so I can compare the first aid taught to volunteers against the typical injuries treated) and also create a survey that I plan to distribute to volunteers to gain an insight into their experience of treating patients whilst out on duty. Hopefully this will allow me to analyse the results of the survey as I enter the second week of the project.

The week so far has certainly been insightful. It is interesting to see the different types of events covered by SJA and the areas that are ‘higher risk’ for more serious injuries. It has also been an opportunity to experience working in an office environment on a 9-5 daily basis. Although having known some of the staff here for many years, there are still new people I meet each day and I’m made to feel very welcome (I was even given my own desk space, computer and had a swipe pass made, so felt just like one of the team!).

To complete this post, here’s a recent throwback to when I made my SJA debut at Lords. Today is the first day of the England vs Pakistan test match at Lords Cricket Ground, which is where you’d probably find me (if I were not in the office here in Bristol!), helping to provide first aid cover for the 29000 spectators at the home of cricket!

Read St John Ambulance – First Week in full