Emergency medical care and police organise joint emergency first aid training

In practice, authorities cooperate on assignments almost daily, having practised working together during events such as joint training sessions.

According to Katja Peräjoki, medical director of Emergency Medical Services at Helsinki University Hospital (HUS), who works at the Helsinki City Rescue Department, emergency care and the police often work on joint assignments, meaning that both emergency care and the police arrive at the scene of an accident, for example. Other typical joint assignments include assignments involving violence, a road accident or an accident at work.

Police officers are also the first to provide tactical emergency first aid in situations and places where it is not yet safe for paramedics to go. The aim of the policy is to increase occupational safety in emergency medical care and reduce further injuries to patients by starting life-saving first aid measures before the arrival of emergency medical personnel.

The joint training sessions between emergency medical care services and the police also aim to increase mutual understanding of each other's practices. The emergency medical care services train police officers almost every year, with different training courses focusing on slightly different topics. This time, the paramedics trained the police officers in CPR: how to recognise lifelessness, how to report an emergency, how to perform quality CPR and how to use an automatic external defibrillator.

The training also covered previous joint assignments where the police had carried out emergency first aid measures. Peräjoki says that the training sessions can be used to discuss the challenges and needs of police officers and paramedics in different types of operations in more depth. They also increase mutual understanding of each other's activities and improve cooperation.

The police have, in turn, provided paramedics with training in areas such as occupational safety and police tactics. In Helsinki, emergency medical care services and the police work together seamlessly.