Street Medic Bridge Training for Medical Professionals

Do No Harm Coalition--Street Medic Bridge Training for Medical Professionals
(https://www.donoharmcoalition.org/street-medic-training.html)

Watching this 2-hour video is a first step to prepare those who are clinical professionals to translate skills onto the streets to assist street medics and to provide primary support in places where there are no street medics. This training was made in response to calls from Brown and Black community in the Bay Area to get help from violence from police during current [2020] protests. It is by no means complete or perfect.

The work of street medics has a deep lineage in anti-oppressive struggles. Western medicine has a deep lineage of oppression for Black, Brown, Indigenous and Poor people. Please accept this training as a first step to a long process of transforming your own clinical work to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive, by giving you some basic tools and knowledge to get out and support the mobilization into the streets. You're not a vouched street medic through watching a two-hour course. We would encourage anyone with medical training to take at least hours of learning under an experienced street medic. Street medics are there to provide medical care when traditional structures are not available due to active antagonism with the police. As such, it is never appropriate to take a patient's agency away or abandon them by turning them over to the police.

We focused on the preparing clinicians for key differences between a static clinical setting and a dynamic street setting, between a setting where you are simply worried about a patient to one where you will be worried about a patient and your own safety because of a threat of violence. We will discuss our capacity to provide further training to dive further into the critical issues of consent, anti-oppression work and decolonizing medicine. Stay humble.