A Weekend of learning.

I spent all day Saturday and Sunday with seven other people, being taught First Aid Level 2 at the training Headquarters of Ambulance Victoria. (This was actually a refresher course for me; I'd done it six years ago, but it is necessary to have more training a few years down the track, as you do forget after a while). That means, apart from the basic emergency life saving procedures, we now know how to identify and manage a number of life threatening situations. We can administer C.P.A., stop severe bleeding, apply splints and slings to broken bones, and we know what to do when somebody is having a stroke, heart attack, seizure, or is choking, or has been burnt, poisoned (many variations there) or has something embedded in their eye. We learnt what should be in a first aid kit - throw out the bandaids and antiseptics for a start!

There was an astonishing amount to take in, and the above was only a fraction of it, but our instructor was very patient, going over everything until he was sure we understood the procedures. Everyone had tales to tell about themselves and their families - all the events we have experienced where First Aid knowledge would have come in very handy. Here I am, carrying out CPA on one of the dummies which is provided for the purpose of practice. You can practise putting slings and splints on another person, but not CPA!



I came away with renewed respect for doctors, nurses and ambulance personnel, who all go through years of training and upgrades - not just one weekend! So while I realise my skills are very limited in comparison, at least I'll know what to do while waiting for an ambulance in the event of any of my clients being ill or falling, or if I'm first on the scene at a car accident, or (and may God forbid) I might be of help if we ever experience a terrorist attack here. Our group discussed briefly what might happen in that scenario, and we agreed that the more people who learn First Aid, the better it is for the community as a whole.
Here is our instructor handing out some bandages to some of the students (the others were elsewhere in the room when I took this).