First Aid Training

I'm a member of the Emergency Response Team (ERT) at CoCE, which means that if there's an emergency, I have to respond, with my team. It means that when there's a fire, I have to put on a helmet, and a special backpack, and get to shout at people through a loud hailer. It also means that if someone needs first aid of some sort, and there's absolutely no one more competent than me around, I'm supposed to do something. It also means that I was too new to realise you are supposed to say no, when they ask.

So that I don't stand there and say 'Fetch someone more competent', I have to have training of various kinds. Today I had first aid training. Now I know to shout "Dial 911 and then fetch someone more competent!"

We learned about about bandages (try to stop them bleeding, call an ambulance if it doesn't), burns (run under cold water, call an ambulance), broken limbs (call an ambulance), poisoning (there's a special number for that - you don't call an ambulance). But mostly we learned about CPR.

There was a film, we had to watch, with extraodinarily wooden actors, who showed us what to do, and then we did it. It was all very exciting. The instructor said that I pumped on the dummy's chest with a great deal of enthusiasm, and that if she needed that doing, she'd like me to do it. You need to push on someone's sternum to push their chest down one and a half to two inches, which seems to me to be rather a long way. She also said that it's normal to break a few ribs while you're doing it - that's OK, and if you hear or feel crunching or cracking just keep going. (There are laws that say that they can't sue you for breaking their ribs whilst keeping them alive.)

The one thing that troubled me was when you were supposed to stop. "Until you're too tired to continue", are the official rules. Well, it's quite hard work pumping away on people's chests, but one imagines that knowing that someone's going to die if you stop would probably keep you going for quite some time - but they wouldn't commit to how long.

We got a little keyring kit, which has a pair of latex gloves (for wearing whilst you scrape vomit from their mouths) and a special mask thing, which you put on the victim, it's plastic, with a gauze for the mouth, so you don't have to actually exhange body fluids with the person you're trying to resuscitate.