The Amputees in Action actors, all of whom are trauma casualty amputees and many of whom have lost limbs in action, will be supported by the agency’s SFX team to bring a heightened level of graphic and interactive realism to the training scenarios.

Time and again it has been shown that this level of realism can contribute significantly to improved performance in the treatment of catastrophic injuries and increased survival rates by ensuring that essential techniques become innate and instinctive for the medical personnel involved – and to ensure that the training is as relevant as possible, Amputees in Action continually research the latest battlefield injury trends and listen carefully to all feedback from clients.

The conference and exhibition will bring together search and rescue experts from around the world to discuss the key issues facing the SAR community and assess the latest equipment and services on offer from a wide range of international exhibitors. At the event, actors and SFX artists from Amputees in Action will be demonstrating the outstanding level of realism they can bring to casualty training simulations – a level of realism that has been shown to save lives by de-sensitising medics and paramedics to the shock of confronting serious injuries, preparing them to follow best practice procedures instinctively.

With military operations still continuing around the globe, terrorist attacks and mass shootings an ever present threat, and natural disasters affecting more and more areas of the world, emergency healthcare has to continue its already impressive developments, creating new technologies and improved techniques. Trauma Innovation is dedicated to doing just that.

Europe’s largest gathering of military, civilian and humanitarian emergency healthcare practitioners, Trauma Innovation 2013, being held at Park Plaza, Victoria, London, represents a perfect showcase for Amputees in Action’s actors and special effects artists.

Amputees in Action, the UK’s largest provider of fully trained amputee actors for emergency services and military training simulations as well as film and television work, is delighted to announce that it has now become a preferred supplier for the National Ambulance Resilience Unit (NARU).

The association, which dates back to 2008, encompasses the highly specialised work of the Hazardous Area Response Teams (HART). Amputees in Action has provided actors, supported by its own special effects artists, for a number of HART training exercises, most recently for Exercise Clean Care – a NATO-funded operation, conducted in France last year, that involved military personnel and paramedics from a number of European countries.

John Pickup, Managing Director of Amputees in Action, commented: “Our previous work with NARU and HART has been a fantastic showcase for the full range of our specialist capabilities in bringing a heightened level of realism to casualty simulations. So it is particularly gratifying that NARU has now appointed us as their preferred supplier.”

Keith Prior, NARU Director, added: “Using the actors supplied by Amputees in Action brings a real benefit to the staffs who are training. The make-up, combined with the fact that the actors have genuinely lost limbs makes the injuries look so lifelike that they appear real. Thankfully we rarely have to deal with such serious injuries, but these training exercises give staff a real insight into what they could be faced with which usually results in excellent levels of learning.”

Press Release – Wednesday 15^th August 2012

Amputees in Action, the UK’s largest provider of fully trained professional amputee actors for casualty simulations, films and TV industries, contributed recently to a key Damage Control in Orthopaedic Trauma Surgery conference. The agency provided a special effects artist and prosthetic to help Medtrade, the ethical medical device company, to demonstrate its Celox treatment.

Organised by the British Orthopaedic Association and attended by leading consultant-level surgeons from the UK and Europe, the course was designed to explain some of the most important lessons learned from front-line medicine in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the military arena, the aim is to stabilise patients so they can be brought back safely to the UK for further treatment but the same principles apply in civilian emergency trauma cases.

Celox is a treatment developed to control serious bleeding from injuries such as explosions and gunshot wounds as well as traffic and industrial accidents.  Already carried by the British military forces and several air ambulance teams, Celox haemostatic bandage can stop bleeding from major arteries within minutes, reducing blood loss and saving lives. 

The purpose of the ‘live’ demonstration performed by Amputees in Action and Medtrade was to show how Celox is used in the field by paramedics in order that the surgeons on the course would be familiar with the product and how it is first applied in preparation for when they have to operate on a patient who has already been treated in this way. 

John Pickup, Managing Director of Amputees in Action, commented: “Adding realism to the life-saving training of medics and paramedics in the military and the emergency services is one of the most rewarding aspects of the work we do. So it was a real pleasure for us to work with Medtrade on demonstrating just how effective Celox can be.”  

Chris Marsden, Head of Marketing at Medtrade added: “Seeing our emergency haemostat in action made a very real difference to surgeons’ understanding of these products used in the field.  Without Amputees in Action we would not have seen anything like the same level of enthusiastic interest.”