Mannequin challenge at RAF Brize Norton’s Tactical Medical Wing

On the 7^th December, 14 Oxfordshire Blue Skies Students from Carterton Community College attended their 6th session of the Blue Skies programme which was hosted by Flt Lt Wendy Norrie, Cpl Claire Thomas and LAC Leah Moss at the Tactical Medical Wing at RAF Brize Norton.  The session focused on teamwork and communication to help the students to understand the purpose of and different types of communication.

For their first task, the students had the exciting opportunity to use the TruLink radios that are used on-board the military aircrafts. The students were set the task to see how well they could communicate using the radio system. The teams were split into two separate rooms and each team had a mannequin. In one room the mannequin had several injuries that had been treated and wrapped in bandages. In the other room the mannequin had the same injuries but the team didn’t know what the injuries were. The task required the first team to relay an accurate description of their mannequin’s injuries in order for the second team to be able to treat their mannequin in the same way. The idea being that with good communication skills the mannequins should look the same at the end of the task.

The students were very enthusiastic about the task and did extremely well in completing the challenge. They learned very quickly that for them all to be able to hear what was being said that they had to listen carefully to each other and wait to speak or the radio system would drop out and they would miss vital information. They worked together to develop a communication system to relay information and they completed their task successfully with both mannequins looking (almost) the same. Caelan said “I was able to lead my team and give clear instructions to get the task done.”  

The next task that they were set challenged them to communicate without speaking. For this task they were split into two teams and given a list of words that they had to communicate to the other team without speaking. This task really took the students out of their comfort zone but they pulled together as a team and made detailed plans with their team members about how they were going to communicate each word to the other team.  There were lots of giggles but they managed to act out the different words using non-verbal communication with the other team being able to guess the words correctly.  

The students had a fantastic session and once again worked closely together as a team, communicating effectively and supporting each other to achieve their objectives.

Flt Lt Wendy Norrie said “It was lovely to see even the shyest student come out of their shell and become more and more confident and chatty by the end of the session.”