D13 National Patient Reporting Form

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National Patient Reporting Form

Dr P. Serebriakoff, Dr F. Hartley

The police recorded 36,998 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument in 2017 Offences involving firearms increased by 27% in year ending June 2017 compared with the previous year

Police officers are often the first on scene at medical emergencies, and with the rising levels of violent crime levels, the demand for officers to provide urgent lifesaving treatment in highly challenging environments is ever growing.  D13 is a national course introduced in 2010 for UK firearms police officers. The course provides comprehensive training aiming to equip frontline officers with the ability to deal with the initial management of commonly encountered medical emergencies.

Officers are required to complete Patient Report Forms (PRFs) after every medical encounter as part of clinical governance. A sample of forms from a range of police services have been retrospectively audited, triggering this review of the forms used and the method of data sharing.

Currently each police force is using different PRF forms to collect this data variability in the data collected and no efficient way to process or share this data. We have developed a new electronic PRF form which aims to overcome these issues. The core aim is to improve education and training of officers through shared experiences.

Learning through shared experiences is a key part of medical education. The new form will enable this to take place on a national and local level. Built using Access, the form will enable efficient data analysis and sharing. This will enable data to be collated nationally, with trends and key incidents fed back into training.

We aim to ensure training continues to meet the demand placed on firearms officers.

The image below is also available as a downloadable PDF.