Road Crash Rescue competitions

[bajdas]

Ohh well, another Adelaide Motor Show been & gone without a inter-service Road Crash Rescue competition held 

This would be the second year that MFS, CFS, SES and interstate teams have not competed. I believe that the paid Competition Organiser position for the three services was lost a few years ago, thus no paid staff have time.

Is this inter-service competition missed by others & do we have any suggestions on who to approach to get this happening again (eg Minister, SAFECOM, individual CEO's, etc) ??

[jaff]

Perhaps this competition , should be sponsored by SGIC (think that is still the arm of the government that pays out road trauma victims, via third party insurance)as in some way the work of rescue crews, goes a long way towards harm minismiation and impacting on their bottom line.
Would give the Minister and hangers on another photo opportunity ,possibly improve moral and commitment from volunteers and maybe atract more!!
A win ,win situation for a government with vision, probably why it will never happen

Cheers Jaff

[chook]

Perhaps a "get together" of all three services RCR practitioners would be a better idea. That way an open exchange of ideas, techniques & understanding of each services ways of doing things - strengths & weaknesses could occur.
Not a big supporter of competitions Andrew, for a number of reasons which I will choose not to discuss here.
Yes the above does happen at competitions & yes they can improve the operations of those teams that compete, however is it really necessary to display what is afterall a traumatic part of what we do to the public, the minister and hangers on (bearing in mind they are the ones cutting our funding).
The Paramedics don't hold public competitions to see who is the best!
The public in general don't get it, the government don't get it & in all honesty I for one would spend my precious time doing far more important things than participating in a competition that at the end of the day is practicing skills in an area I don't particularly enjoy doing in the first place!
The money could be used instead to provide more & better training for the practitioners in the field. And I don't think it attracts volunteers, it would turn them away.
cheers

[bittenyakka]

Well that is a diffrent way of looking at it.

I would suspect that the idea of competitions are good. Considering many other industries have competitive aspects and awards that they can win so why can't we compete?

[24pumper]

Hi All,

I initially didnt like the idea of RCR competitions, i saw it as a lot of carry-on that didnt have much relevence to day-to-day operations.

HOWEVER then i actually participated in one! I found it a great training oportunity, excellent to partake in a challenging scenario and then recieve feedback from experienced RCR operators from a range of background (both SA and interstate-Ambulance, SES, mines, paid and vol FF's). I also found it very beneficial to stand and watch other brigades/stations/units faced with a scenario and how they tackled it and the associated problems. I often found myself stading next to a member of CFS/SES/MFS discussing options. Many new techniques, ideas and even equipment was taken back to the brigade and tried, some worked for us some didnt. The oportunity to work on new cars was a great, soemthign we dont usually have the luxury of.

I think my brigade (I certainly did) gained a lot from the experince, even if it was just the motivation to put in a few extra training sessions locally and are very thankfull to those people who helped organise and run the event.
24p

[Red Message]

I'm not a huge fan of the comps, mainly due to 'real life' and 'competitions' being two very different things in terms of training, speed and process.

I'd love to see a forum of all services with a 'show and tell' of tips and techniques - there is always something for us to learn.

[chook]

Yep - thats what I would support!
cheers

[bittenyakka]

so something like an Aussie version of FDIC ?

[bajdas]

....I'd love to see a forum of all services with a 'show and tell' of tips and techniques - there is always something for us to learn.

Would you get enough people to attend if you held one in Adelaide ?? Would you travel from the country, pay the accomodation expense as well as the entrance fee ??
Several expo/forums have collapsed in Adelaide because they were not attended enough to warrant the effort.
For example, how would you get the mining companies involved (eg ESO's for Olympic Dam) ?

[Zippy]

thats a worrying trend...not just for these forums expo's and competitions..but a lot of the fun of this state is just withering away

[chook]

Trouble is that modern life makes us time poor - think of all of the courses that get canned because of lack of numbers.
I'm not sure where you could hold an expo Andrew - don't think it would make much of a difference.
The other thing is brigades/units that are light on numbers can't afford to send people away (thats why no one from the Riverland goes to the parade for example).
And the paid services may not pay their people to attend - so why would they?
So I'm not sure what the answer is - it's hard enough to get internal service forums of the ground (our annual training conference is one I can think of), so organising a multi agency event would be a nightmare.
Anyway the idea is great but the reality is something else - sadly.
cheers 

[K55]

I suppose competitions are a letdown when the same team wins every year...

[Red Message]

What? The boys from Burwood?