Communities of Practice and the Professionalization of the Technical Rescue Service in England and Wales

Abstract.
In all of the 48 independent charities that constitute Mountain Rescue in England and Wales there are a number of clearly delineated professions, such as medicine, as well as a host of less clearly defined but well established communities of practice, such as those that form around climbing and technical rescue. That these groups all come together within Mountain Rescue to produce an effective rescue on the hill -come rain or shine- on a voluntary -pro bono- basis is something they share, but these different groups do not share the same status and neither do they operate in the same ways. In this paper I investigate these differences and discuss ways to better utilise the learning of the aforementioned communities of practice in order to increase the effectiveness of Mountain Rescue in England and Wales. What this current research has revealed is that the contrast between the medical function, which is completely defined and controlled by a central all-powerful formal institution, and climbing is stark. With climbing there is very little evidence of ‘professionalization,’ and in this paper the consequences of this are considered, including the relatively large role this gives in the climbing case to hearsay rather than more clearly defined empirical evidence. The implications of this will be discussed and a suggestion for a change in policy provided for consideration as part of a review by Brecon Mountain Rescue Team (of which the author is a member) into its (climbing related) technical rescue operations.