The Evolution of EHAAT's Pre-Hospital Care Course

At Essex & Herts Air Ambulance (EHAAT), our commitment to excellence in pre-hospital care extends beyond patient treatment—it also encompasses the education and development of our clinical teams. The EHAAT Pre-Hospital Care Course is designed to equip new clinicians with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to deliver expert care in the most challenging environments.

Here, Centre for Excellence Education Lead, Lisa Burrell explains more about the inspiration, evolution, and impact of the Pre-Hospital Care Course at EHAAT.

What inspired the creation of the Pre-Hospital Care Course at EHAAT?

Our EHAAT Pre-Hospital Care Course has been created around the specialist expertise in our team and core clinical themes. We wanted to create a course that gave our new clinicians an early opportunity to understand some of the expert innovations at EHAAT, embed their practice within a safe context, and feel connected within the team.

How has the course evolved since it first started?

Initially, our focus was on building a course to act as a springboard for clinical learning. Over time, we’ve realised the course has the power to be much more impactful in many ways. The course encourages friendships and togetherness. It brings our experienced team together to continually refresh and move practice forward. It allows us to hear the voice of new people joining our team to keep us unblinkered. Further, it has allowed brilliant opportunities to involve our whole charity team and share insight into the care we aim to bring to patients across all levels.

What sets this course apart from other pre-hospital care training programmes?

The EHAAT Centre for Excellence has brought into focus three key domains of care that the course now centralises around: head injury, cardiac arrest, and patient experience and outcomes. The daily work of this team in exploring practice has brought unique features and innovation that are fundamental throughout the course.

For example, the extensive work of our Patient & Family Liaison Team has hugely helped our understanding of what is meaningful to our patients. We are now using this to direct key learning themes on the course.

In our last course, we brought people to our simulations who have lived experience of specific illnesses or injuries. This was a hugely valuable experience for our team, particularly around the lasting impact of communication. Since then, we have begun to build a small faculty of people who have previous experience as EHAAT patients to help us design simulations and evaluate learning.

This exciting step helps us move on from education designed by medics for medics towards aspects designed by patients for patients. Through this, we can intentionally focus our practice in a patient-centred way.

Can you explain the importance of having both new recruits and external attendees on the course?

Our strategy for education begins with our team and our patients, then extends to our community and beyond.

We are pleased to be able to share our education with other critical care responders in our region who may care for our patients, as well as with teams further afield in the UK or internationally. This promotes the reputation of EHAAT, brings positive collaborations, and helps us maintain open thinking in what we are learning.

What’s the most rewarding part of leading this course for you?

I’m always humbled by the enthusiasm new people bring when joining our team and the passion the whole clinical team brings when sharing their experience. I love the light-bulb moments of creativity and innovation that come when talented people come together to learn. It’s a privilege for me to be part of that.

A big thank you to our corporate partner Teleflex for graciously providing lunch for the ‘day at work’ session.

Read more about the EHAAT Pre-Hospital Care Course