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As I approach my fifth year on FTRS serving at MRTC in Bassingbourn, I look back and feel a huge amount of pride in both what I have achieved so far and more
importantly what I have learnt during my second term in office! I’m 53 this year and hoping to carry on this amazing journey until I am 60, which will then secure me two back-to-back pensions – I know!
As part of the 4-week pre-deployment training, my primary role is to conduct Individual Training Requirements (ITRs) for up to 2000 Service Personnel (SP) per year. My fundamental job is to test them on the Role Fitness Test (Soldier) (RFT(S)). As I am sure you can appreciate, the RFT isn’t just any old test that you can just turn up to and pass. This test requires a fair degree of pre-requisite training and because I have never met these individuals, we also ask them to sign a ‘Fit to Attend’ declaration and must also pass a Soldier Conditioning Review (SCR) on day 2 of the course.
I mentioned in my previous article that I was due an advisory visit from LWC (Maj Murdoch and WO1 Pyburn). I saw this as an opportunity to absorb as much of their knowledge and experience, which in turn will ensure MRTC’s policies and risk assessments are watertight. Overall, the visit went incredibly well. Both Maj Murdoch and SMI Pyburn went through everything with a fine toothcomb, and in my 27 years of service it was the best audit I have ever experienced, which of course was to their credit. When they left, I was exhausted, but on reflection, over the last 6 months of planning for this day, was it worth it – it certainly was! MRTC was in a great place and in the words of Maj Murdoch – MRTC are Bombproof! Little would we know that that statement would be used very soon after the audit.
Set up of the RFT(S)
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MISSION READY TRAINING CENTRE (MRTC)
“There’s No Such Thing as Luck” WO2 (QMSI) P Harrison RAPTC
Literally, within 2 weeks of my unit’s audit, a situation arose that could have had a very different outcome. A student suffered a heart attack on an RFT. This is what happened - on completion of the 2 km best effort bergan run / walk everyone paraded together to receive the next set of instructions when one of the students collapsed and stopped breathing. Initially it was a suspected heat injury but it was soon clear (temp was only 11 degrees) that this person was having a heart attack. Fortunately for this student he collapsed right between two civilian trained paramedics and in front of the MRTC medic on duty (who incidentally is the best medic I have ever worked with). They immediately started CPR and within 3 minutes had the defib connected, within 4 minutes the student was breathing, within 10 minutes the student was talking and within 20 mins the ambulance arrived. Was this student lucky? In my opinion there is no such thing as luck, just a well augmented and executed action plan that
is transparent to all unit personnel and covered in our PTI staff training.
Shortly after the dust had settled, the unit received countless calls from various Military organisations asking questions related to the incident, not to catch us out, merely just to get a true account of what happened and what actions MRTC had taken. It was because of the recent Advisory visit that my CoC were totally confident that all the content in the Risk Assessments, Policies and Action Plans were detailed and accurate. I honestly believe, even if this incident had proved fatal, there were no failings or shortcomings on our part.
Thank you LWC for a professionally delivered advisory visit and for those of you out there with a date in the diary, use it as an opportunity to get your unit to a standard similar to MRTC!
Delivering the RFT(S) at MRTC