Health professionals at Ysbyty Gwynedd are the first in the UK to take part in a new course designed to improve their resuscitation skills.

The Focused Echo in Emergency Life Support Plus (FEEL+) course was held for the first time at Ysbyty Gwynedd during May.

Health professionals who took part in the training were offered a new extended two-day practical training course using Echocardiography to provide further knowledge and experience when they manage a patient who shows signs of a cardiac arrest.

An echocardiogram is a scan used to look at the heart and nearby blood vessels. It can help diagnose and monitor certain heart conditions by checking the structure of the heart and surrounding blood vessels, analysing how blood flows through them and assessing the pumping chambers of the heart.

Liana Shirley, advanced clinical physiologist for Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board (BCUHB), with her husband Chris Shirley, who is the professional development lead for resuscitation across BCUHB, brought the FEEL course to north Wales in 2017 and have now expanded this into a two-day course with the addition of a second day of mentored scanning experience.

Liana said: “We feel really proud to have achieved bringing this course to North Wales before anywhere else in the UK.

“This course provides the practical training needed by medics and other advanced health care professionals to further their knowledge and experience to provide the best care for the patient.

“There are many reasons why the heart stops so using Echocardiography in a resuscitation scenario improves outcomes for patients as it can identify abnormalities that can be reversed.

“We’ve received fantastic feedback from those who attended the course – one of the candidates flew from Norway to attend and has since requested that another nine doctors on the Norwegian Mountain Rescue Team all come across and complete our course!”

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