Niagara West Fire (Niagara, Canada) have become the first fire service in the world to own a Patient Handling manikin, after Canadian photographer Mitchell Brown kindly chose to donate his photo competition prize to the service earlier this year.
Mitchell was one of three winners of our annual ‘Photo of the Year’ competition at the end of 2021, coming in the top by public vote on our Facebook page. His photograph proved incredibly popular gathering over 5 thousand votes, even catching the attention of national news pages in Niagara who helped Mitchell secure one of the top spots by sharing his photograph too.
Also known as Smoke is Showing Fireground Photography on Facebook, Mitchell has close ties to his local fire and rescue services, so when he found out he had won our competition it was a no brainer to him that the prize would be gifted to the subjects of his winning photograph – Niagara West Fire.
The firefighters at NWF were extremely grateful for Mitchell’s kindness when donating the gift, and for the constant support he shows photographing them in his own time…
“We are extremely lucky to having Mitch take photos of us over the years. He has given back to so many fire departments in our area with no expectation from us. So thank you to you and Mitch. You may never understand how much this helps our firefighters when they see the photos Mitch has taken.”
With many different Fire & Rescue manikin models to choose from, we were a little surprised when NWF chose our Patient Handling manikin, which is typically used by Healthcare and Hospital professionals for teaching the correct method of transferring a patient, such as from a bed to a wheelchair, using slings and hoists. But when Chief Training Officer Don Sherren saw the Patient Handling manikin he knew it would be the best model to cater to the wide variety of situations his team need to be prepared for.
Our Canadian distributors ALG Safety Inc kindly arrange to hand over the manikin to Brown and the NWF team.
After receiving their brand new manikin NWF wasted no time putting him to work in an extrication scenario, featuring multiple cars and an entrapped casualty.
Don Sherren, Chief Training Officer at Niagara West Fire said:
“The manikin work really well for us. We were able to set up the manikin in a car, place the right foot in a position, zip tie the manikin foot in place, simulating that the foot is trapped behind the brake pedal.
We’ve had to deal with this a number of times here in Lincoln in crashes on the QEW.
We then crushed the car with a tractor to simulate the crash, and then placed another vehicle in a compromising position which had to be addressed during the extrication.
The fire crews had to size up the situation and determine a plan of action to extricate the manikin in a timely manner ready for EMS to take over patient care once the manikin was extricated from the vehicle. They also had to consider possible fuel leaking issues and de-energize the vehicles so there was limited ignition sources.”
We’re looking forward to seeing what other scenarios Don and the NWF team get up to with their Patient Handling manikin and wonder if any other fire services will join them in choosing this manikin for their training too!
If you’re looking for a manikin to supplement your Fire & Rescue training you can see our full range here or please feel free to get in touch on 01490 413282 or mail@ruthlee.co.uk to discuss your training needs.