24 - Head Injuries

Head Injuries is the twenty-fourth title of Action Training Systems' Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) series, and SkillsTrain, the authorised ATS distributor in South Africa, supplies it locally as part of that series. It covers traumatic brain injury in depth, from the types of injury to assessment and care.

The title presents head trauma and the pathophysiology of traumatic brain injury, the way damage unfolds inside the skull. It describes concussion, contusion, subdural haematoma and epidural haematoma, which are different patterns of bleeding and bruising around and within the brain, as well as laceration, herniation and diffuse axonal injury. It describes the signs and symptoms of head injury and demonstrates how to assess and provide care for head injury patients, where protecting the airway and recognising deterioration are critical. The module is aimed at emergency medical technician students and working crews who must spot a rising pressure inside the skull before it becomes fatal.

The content follows the United States National EMS Education Standards for the Emergency Medical Technician level. As an Action Training Systems EMS title it sits in a library that ATS accredits through CAPCE, the Commission on Accreditation for Prehospital Continuing Education, where each online interactive course carries one hour of continuing education and counts as Distributive Education under the National Continued Competency Program of the NREMT, the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians. It uses the ATS teach, test and track model: the learner is assessed as they work through the material, and any section answered incorrectly is replayed before they can move on. The programme runs about 19 minutes and SkillsTrain supplies it on USB or as a classroom streaming option, on its own or as part of the complete 27 title Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) series, with an online interactive version deployable to a learning management system (LMS).

Within the same Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) series, SkillsTrain also supplies Chest Trauma, Abdominal Emergencies and Geriatric Emergencies, so the related modules can be studied together as one progression.