The Basic Emergency Care Course (BEC): "Approach to the acutely ill and injured" was developed by World Health Organization (WHO) and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), in collaboration with the International Federation for Emergency Medicine, to address the needs of frontline health care providers who manage acute illness and
injury with limited resources. The BEC course teaches a systematic approach to the initial assessment and management of time-sensitive conditions where early intervention can save lives.
This course has been piloted in Tanzania and Uganda and is considered an effective, low-cost mechanism to improve emergency care delivery.
We would like to administer the BEC course to local Emergency Care providers in Belize. As well as, provide these newly trained providers with further instruction to become BEC trainers through a "train the trainer" model. By empowering them to teach the skills they have learned, we hope to support these new trainers in continued dissemination of the BEC to other areas of need throughout Belize.
The team is made up of a collaborative, multi-institution group with Emergency Care providers from Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children's Hospital and Brown University. However, we do not have institutional funding available, and are planning this intervention on our own time.
In Belize there is only one tertiary care center, Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital in Belize City. This will serve as our primary teaching site.
Local physicians and nurses throughout Belize have been invited to participate. We aim to train a total of 24 medical practitioners, who practice in areas with limited resources. They will participate in the Basic Emergency Care Course as well as a "Train the Trainer" course. We would like to empower those professionals already working on the front lines of medicine to train others in treatment of emergent conditions.
Studies have shown, that prehospital and early interventions on particular acute and emergent conditions can help reduce medically preventable death.
By training these providers to give the Basic Emergency Care course, we hope to leave a cadre of trained professionals who can continue to educate and build skills amongst those who encounter emergency conditions. Our aim is to build capacity.
What a great trip! Thank you for the support. In total we trained 34 medical providers in the principles of basic emergency care and recognition of emergent conditions. They underwent a week of lectures, simulations and skills application. They in turn, also were trained on how to be course facilitators.
