It turns out that we are guinea-pigs again.........Paul Savage, the RNLI trainer who is conducting our first-aid course, has spent the last 12 months re-writing the RNLI training handbook for first-aid. If tonight's session is anything to go on he has done a great job. Without doubt it was the most interesting and knowledge enriching (does that make sense?) course I have ever undertaken. I like it because he has thrown out the old textbook stuff and boiled it down to first principles. No longer does he want us to try and diagnose things, he doesn't want us to worry about the injury too much (at least not in the first assessment). What he is asking us to do is look at the symptoms and decide whether someone is 'Big Sick' or 'Little Sick'. Simple! 'Big Sick' = gonna die soon of no oxygen or no circulation. 'Little Sick' = not gonna die.........just yet. And then simply do whatever we can to prevent that death or prevent things from getting too much worse!
I am very much looking forwards to tomorrow evening's instalment. And yes, before you ask, it not only finished on time but in fact about 5 minutes early. Nice one!
1 comment:
An interesting post for me. I am very interested in the whole area of pre-hospital care, particularly in situations such as you might face when you have a potentially prolonged episode of patient care, i.e. the return journey, but not necessarily with the support of an ambulance crew/physician or the like. There are a few changes afoot in the field, and this one sounds interesting.
Mark.
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