One of the big things that came to mind when writing ✓ Project Bucket List was learning things that I’d been putting off for a while. One of those things was learning First Aid Training. There’s this idea that keeps coming to mind as of late about becoming a well-rounded individual, sort of the can-do-anything man.
Just imagine: bravely jumping up after hearing a “does anybody know first aid?!” and saving a wealthy millionaire’s life, who recently was visited by three ghosts and wants to give away their entire fortune to the next person who helps them. And they have a villa in Italy that they want to give away too.
So, I stuck it on the list, proudly thinking about how my benevolence would make me rich, before I realised that many first aid courses are like £200-£400. There are still some free community-oriented programmes, and of course, most employers in larger organisations will need somebody in charge of first aid, but for those schmucks like me who aren’t in those situations, there’s nothing out there.
A habit I’ve developed over the last few years is trawling through Eventbrite, looking for anything that’d help me tick things off my list. Lo and behold, one day, I noticed an event for an Emergency First Aid at Work training day (the formal name of the qualification) from a company called Mini First Aid, who mostly focus on first aid classes for parents or carers. The exciting thing here was the price tag. A spicy £75 (the cost of 25 Tesco meal deals, pre-COVID).
I signed up immediately and booked one Friday in July as the day that I’d set in motion my route to a million pounds and a villa by Lake Como. The class was up in Sheffield at their football stadium. For people interested in football, that’s pretty cool, but for me, it just meant that parking was a little difficult.
The course had 16 people in, and the majority worked for the council in some capacity. I was the only person there who wasn’t being mandated to do it as part of a job role. This did seem like a surprise to a few, as if the idea of doing this outside of work hadn’t occurred to them.
The two gents teaching the course are both low, soft and reassuring talkers. First off, they’re explaining what a First Aider actually does – and they make a damn good point that I hadn’t understood before then. A first aider is there to assess the situation, call for real help, and provide aid to whoever has been injured. You’re not a second aider, nor a third aider, nor a long-term aider. You’re there to phone the ambulance, and try to keep the person as alive as possible until then.
We start off the day learning CPR. We get the technique down, learn that Stayin’ Alive is the perfect tempo, along with Pink Pony Club (a tune that many of the learners hummed throughout the rest of the day). Once we’ve covered the basics, we move on to the recovery position and its variations, which we practice on each other. We learn about cardiac arrest and heart attacks, and I get a strong sense of my own mortality. They present us with defibrillator machines and teach us how to use them.
I was surprised by how much of First Aid was focused on asking for consent. If you’re ever going to help somebody, unless they’re physically unable or incapable of answering, you’re supposed to get consent. And speaking of consent, we then move on to choking, which is pretty frightening from how they described it. We practice what to do with the teacher:
“Are you choking? Can you cough? Do you remember your safe word?” (I made that joke in the class; everybody laughed, which makes me a good person).
You then stand behind the person, smack them hard in the back 5 times, check if they can breathe yet, then move onto what you and I would call the Heimlich manoeuvre. Those in the first aid sector, however, would likely call it the Abdominal Thrusts, a slightly dirtier nomenclature, and all thanks to Heimlich himself, who trademarked the technique.
Many of the things that were covered in the sessions seem obvious in hindsight, but I know that in a panic, they’d’ve been unlikely to occur to me. Something as silly as “call for help, then put your phone on hands-free so you can keep delivering CPR” seems so obvious, but I welcome the fact that I was told to do this.
“There will never be a situation where there is only one person when using a defibrillator” was another one. How can you be sure that there will always be at least two people? Well, if you’ve had the opportunity to get your hands on a defibrillator, you’ll’ve had to run to a nearby street corner. And, of course, you shouldn’t be leaving somebody alone if they need one, you should be doing CPR, so unless you have Mr Fantastic’s jelly arms, there’s no way you will have the machine.
After lunch, we look at cuts, bruises, burns, all the sorts of things that make me remember that we’re just bags of meat. This has less practical training and more information, as they can’t really recreate things in a class without volunteers.
Things take a serious turn when the one lady in the class who has a peanut allergy takes the prop EpiPen and demonstrates to the room how she would use it. The teacher springs into action as he points out that, if that had been a real EpiPen, she would have injected it directly through her thumb, out through the fingernail. We all wince, and he explains the correct way of doing things.
I’m properly of the view now – why isn’t this shit government-funded? Yeah, soapbox moment. Sit back down, buddy, you’re not going anywhere. Anybody could get hurt at any point, and there are so many of us. I know for a fact that I wouldn’t have done CPR properly had I not done this training, and I know just how common accidents are. With all the slips, falls, stabbings, and wars we’re going to see over our lifetime, why is first aid training not something that everybody knows?
I mean statistically, people get hurt. Look, prime example, a funny little happenstance. The very next day, I was in a first aid tent while I was walking the Macmillan Mighty Hike for charity. First time in my life as well.
Oi, government! Do something about this, please. Thanks.
As I wrap this one up, I want to present you with two further call to actions:
- If you haven’t ever done first aid training, find a way to do it. Ask at work. They gave enough examples of lives that have been saved through simple first aid, that I truly believe that everybody should have the knowledge and training on what to do to help.
- If you’re a rich millionaire who has recently had a Dickens-esque experience with an old business partner who looks a like a doorknob, please come hang out outside my house and see if you can get yourself to enter cardiac arrest. I promise that I’ll try my best.
