DARTMOUTH Coastguards joined forces with Britannia Royal Naval College medics at their training night last week.

The coastguards were aboard TS Hindostan, the training ship permanently moored in Sand Quay at the college and used to train some of the future medics of the Royal Navy.

A Coastguard spokesperson said: “The exercise scenario was the casualty (one of the crew) had fallen below decks in a confined space in the bow, and had injured her lower leg. We sent a small team down to assess the casualty, played at this point by a trainee medic, with some very convincing prosthetic injuries!

“Casualty care commenced, and the casualty was examined and assessed. The injury was a compound fracture to the lower leg which was dressed, and the leg immobilised and prepared for evacuation off the ship.”

They used the Coastguard Rescue Evac Body Splint Stretcher to secure the ‘casualty’ – at that point a dummy - and the whole team manoeuvred the ‘casualty’ through a tricky shoulder height bulkhead hatch whilst lifting over machinery.

The spokesperson added: “Then, using some of the Naval medics as well we got the casualty out of this confined area. This was made all the more difficult because of all the exposed pipelines and electrical boxes cables, and other equipment that lined the walls of the ship and had to be avoided, as it would in a real event.

“We were also shown how the Navy do it with their stretcher equipment, which works in a similar way to ours but a different design. We also practiced using their set up to bring the casualty out onto the deck and off the ship which was the end of the exercise.

“We were very fortunate to be able to take part in a joint local exercise with the Navy and the opportunity to train onboard one of their ships. To practice extraction from a challenging environment and in cramped conditions, and also exchange information on how both organisations would deal with such incidents was both interesting and very useful too. We’d like to thank BRNC and staff and trainee medics for their time and help in our training.”