Members of Wiltshire police force and medics at Swindon's Great Western Hospital are helping to train each other's staff.

Under the new system, the hospital is training a group of policemen in advanced first aid, and the police have reciprocated by offering conflict management training for doctors and nurses.

Community beat officer Pete Robins said: "All police officers have some basic first aid training, but we are being given more advanced training that will teach us how to resuscitate people, as well as use defibrillators in the case of people having heart attacks.

"A lot of the people here are firearms officers, and the aim of this training is for us to be able to take care of casualties in situations that are too dangerous for the normal emergency service personnel like paramedics."

Resuscitation officer Jon Taylor, who is in charge of the course, said: "This is a fairly new course, and nationally only six police officers have done it.

"We are training ten police officers and two civilian support staff from the Wiltshire force, so we are very much ahead of the game in that regard."

In return for their training, the police have offered conflict management training to hospital staff.

Andy Pullam, a firearms officer based at Devizes, said: "The take-up for that has been very good and we have trained 200 hospital staff, mostly nursing staff.

"It's about teaching staff how to recognise what situations may turn violent and defuse them before they get that far."