Diploma of Emergency Health Care

During this healthcare course, you will gain the clinical skills and knowledge to assess patients in an emergency. You will learn how to provide life support, and master appropriate interventions for the crucial time before your patient gets to hospital.

Learning from our expert staff through our award-winning learning model, you will gain knowledge and skills in emergency reponses:

• providing critical life support
• infection prevention and control procedures
• management of major incident scenes
• delivering clinical care
• health professional and health system engagement
• safe work practices.

You also gain crucial patient communication skills, including:

• analysing and responding to client health information
• communicating complex situations to support health care
• working with culturally diverse patients.

Once you have completed this course, you will have the confidence and skills to work in the healthcare and patient-transport industry, supporting ambulance drivers, paramedics, and hospital workers.

In Victoria, you will be qualified to work in roles such as:

• Ambulance Transport Attendant (ATA)
• Patient Transport Officer (PTO)
• Ambulance Community Officer (ACO) with Ambulance Victoria (in rural areas).

Further employment opportunities vary from state to state. You may find employment with:

• private sector health care providers e.g. Royal Flying Doctor Service, St John Ambulance
• state/territory ambulance authorities
• Australia Defence Force
• first aid providers.

The course structure comprises the following core and elective units. These electives have been selected based on industry needs, graduate pathways and/or student and teacher feedback.

To be awarded the HLT51020 Diploma of Emergency Care, a student must successfully complete a total of Seventeen (17) units of competency, comprising of:

* Nine (9) core units
* Eight (8) elective units, consisting of:

• at least four (4) units from the electives listed below,
• up to four (4) units from the electives listed below or from any other current endorsed Training Package or accredited course.

The selection of electives must be relevant to the job outcome sought, local industry requirements and the complexity of skills appropriate to the AQF level of this qualification.

Use our credit calculator to find out how much credit you could get towards your course, based on your previous study.

You may be able to complete your qualification sooner through formal recognition of your existing skills. This is known as Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL).

To receive RPL, we assess your previous work, education and life experiences against recognised qualifications. Applications for RPL can be made prior to enrolling.

Call us on 1300 TAFE VP (1300 823 387) to discuss RPL options with the course manager.

Before starting your application, please read through the step-by-step VU Polytechnic application process to make sure you have all the necessary documents and information ready to successfully complete your application.

Before applying, you should consider whether you also want to apply for:

• Credit transfer/Recognition of prior learning (RPL): If you have significant experience or studies elsewhere you may be eligible for credit for some units of your course and not have to undertake them.