ATS EMS Skills

ATS EMS Skills is Action Training Systems' dedicated psychomotor skills series, and SkillsTrain, the authorised ATS distributor in South Africa, supplies it locally. Rather than working through emergency medical theory topic by topic the way the EMR and EMT pathways do, this series is built entirely around hands on technique, the physical skills a responder has to perform correctly under pressure rather than simply understand.

ATS states the series covers 52 main subject areas and more than 160 individual skills spread across nine titles: Vital Signs and Monitoring Devices, Patient Assessment, Airway Skills, Hemorrhage Control and Soft Tissue Injuries, Splinting, Lifts and Moves, Immobilization, Medications and Routes of Delivery, and Cardiac Management. Each title demonstrates the technique on video step by step, so a learner can watch, practise and be checked against the same standard every time rather than relying on an instructor's memory of how a skill should look.

ATS states the skills and techniques are based on guidelines from NREMT (the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians) and NAEMSE (National Association of EMS Educators), the same frameworks underpinning the EMR and EMT series, and the series includes closed captioning throughout. SkillsTrain supplies it on USB or as a classroom streaming option.

Who it is for: EMS, fire and ambulance training programmes wanting a dedicated skills only refresher or practical supplement to run alongside EMR or EMT theory training, and training officers running hands on skills stations.