Emmanuel Bourcet
Facilitate and accelerate training for first aid gestures!
Emmanuel Bourcet began his career in audiovisual production before embarking on entrepreneurship. In 2018, he founded D’un Seul Geste with Ludovic Fagot, computer engineer, Nicolas Guerchet, firefighter and first aid trainer for 20 years, and Bernard Périco, former commander of Paris Fire Brigade.
In France, only 5% of people with cardiac arrest survive, compared to 40% in Norway. In France, only 20% of the population is trained in first aid, while this figure reaches 90% in the Nordic countries. Faced with this observation, the four partners decided to create D’un Seul Geste in order to facilitate and speed up training in France thanks to a virtual reality solution. This solution makes it possible to train, in one hour, learners in first aid and to develop life-saving gestures in businesses.
Hello Emmanuel,
The figures are showing that France is lagging behind in terms of training. What are D’Un Seul Geste’s first quantified objectives and targets to accelerate learning pace for lifesaving techniques?
It’s good to remember these numbers because no one really knows them. In France, we have a public health problem with too few citizens trained in gestures that can save lives. Our country has a developed economy, our rescue system and our hospitals are very efficient. Despite this, we have poor cardiac arrest survival rates. Citizens must become aware of their critical role: they must practice simple but essential gestures while waiting for help to arrive. Finally, if a life is saved, it is as much thanks to gestures of the first witnesses as to the medical procedures that will follow. Citizen is the first link of the rescue chain. Our mission is to provide solutions to have more citizens trained.
We realized that the main obstacle to training is its lack of accessibility, particularly in terms of duration. Today, if you want to train individually, it will last a day and if you train within the framework of a company, it will last 2 days. Individually, it is very complicated to find training. In companies, these are never prioritized or put forward training courses because they have no direct impact on business.
D’un Seul Geste’s mission consists in empowering companies to quickly and simply train their employees in first aid. Different teaching skills are allowing us to offer training which lasts only one hour and which is individual.
We also want to support effectiveness of these training courses. Indeed, we observe that after 6 months or 1 year, most people who have received traditional training say they no longer remember what to do and are not sure of being able to take action.
We therefore wanted to correct this point. For this, we decided to use virtual reality. This device makes it possible to increase the effectiveness of training, in particular by improving memorization. Today, we can clearly see that the role of companies and their place in society are changing. All companies are aware that they can have a positive impact on society. That is why we offer them a turnkey solution to take a first step.
Why did you choose virtual reality as a training medium?
The first idea is to make people want to train, so we have reduced training time and the fact of using a virtual reality simulator is also an asset in terms of attractiveness. Then, when you learn in immersion, you are 100% focused. Our brain is fully available for learning.
During a traditional training, there are bound to be times when you drop out. With a virtual reality headset, you are taken elsewhere, into another world. This total concentration allows you to remember better. Second point, this helmet is connected with a first aid dummy. In the helmet, we no longer see a dummy but a victim and this allows you to immerse yourself in realistic situations that bring this situation to life, feel emotions, sensations. This stimulates the emotional memory which makes it possible to record gestures in a lasting way.
How has D’Un Seul Geste been received since its launch?
We have trained over 10 000 people in over 200 businesses and communities to date, and the satisfaction rate is 97%. The reception is therefore very positive. Training managers are happy to train teams quickly and efficiently. Users are delighted because they learn as close as possible to reality. Virtual reality is a real plus for better learning.
As we are an impact company with a real social vocation, we have decided to branch out to allow as many people as possible to be trained. We therefore have partner companies that onboard our solution and organize training for the benefit of their own targets.
If you had to sum up the D’un Seul Geste adventure in a few words or a few figures, what would they be?
I would choose the word Usefulness because the people we train thank us for having taught them these very useful gestures.
I would like to come back to this figure: 97% satisfaction rate. We are well above the satisfaction rates for traditional training. This proves that the choice of one-hour workshops and the use of technology has a really positive contribution to the quality of training.
What are your dreams for the future?
Our dream consists in making French people train on a massive scale, thanks to our solution. We have the ambition of 100,000 people trained by 2025. We also want to capitalize on what makes the success of our training, that is to say its short duration and its ability to dive in immersion. We are developing our training catalog. At the end of 2022, we launched training dedicated to fire safety!
Thank you Emmanuel for your answers !