SJA Activity First Aid Course

[DaveWL]

Just completed my St John's Ambulance Activity First Aid.

http://www.sja.org.uk/sja/training-courses/courses-for-the-general-public/activity-first-aid.aspx

Did a fair bit of practice on dressing wounds and the usual CPR (though the rules for that seem to have been tweaked again).

I'm still not sure how confident I feel that I could deal with a knife or axe injury in the woods though - far too many of these courses seem to assume you're only going to perform a 30 minutes maximum holding pattern until the ambulance gets there. Some of the areas we deliberately seek out are less accessible than that!

Has anyone come across any good longer / more practical courses for First Aid? At the moment my plan is to involve myself a bit more with the local SJA and see what I can pick up.

 

[nigeltm]

Wayne at Forest Knights is a member on here and runs a very good multi-day course. Occasionally he also offer it at discount to BCUK members. I took the course last year. It's all taught in the woods with a number of very useful practical exercises. It's definitely not a "plug the hole until the ambulance arrives" type of course. It even covers how best to break the news of a fatality to family and friends on an exped. At the end you get the FAW certificate as well as the more advanced certification.

 

[Maggot]

Wayne at Forest Knights is a member on here and runs a very good multi-day course. Occasionally he also offer it at discount to BCUK members. I took the course last year. It's all taught in the woods with a number of very useful practical exercises. It's definitely not a "plug the hole until the ambulance arrives" type of course. It even covers how best to break the news of a fatality to family and friends on an exped. At the end you get the FAW certificate as well as the more advanced certification.

That is absolutely not first aid! Why even cover it, it is just useless added information that is totally pointless, as a first aider this is absolutely not your role, spend the time covering this on extra resus training.

If someone dies on an expedition/trip away, I am sure this training provider is not seriously suggesting you ring the relatives, when you get a signal, and break the news "Johnny has some great pictures of the valley, we managed to get the memory card from his camera after he fell to his death" or that no-one tells his family until you all return home? Get the emergency teams, let the Police know and let them break the news as soon as possible.

I have had to let quite a lot of people know their loved ones have died, sometimes in less than ideal circumstances, the thought of some first aid at work course attendee doing the same thing on the phone fills me with a cold dread. It needs to be done face to face, anything else is grossly negligent and potentially very damaging.

 

[Bush Matt]

The course Nigel is talking about leads to the advanced award from ECP (recognised by MLTA etc), a FAAW certificate and is run by Wayne at Forest Knights who has done a fantastic deal for members here in previous years.

Wayne's method of teaching - all of us sharing his woods and fire for 4 days - means that much beyond normal first aid is covered. The contents is heavily geared towards remote and expedition medicine, some of the additional topics were: search & rescue patterns, emergency stretchers, extraction planning, long term casualty management, night time multiple casualty simulation, dealing with death when extraction is not immenent.

It is within this background that there is the possibility of having to tell a close relative of a fatality at the scene, it is not unusual for brothers, dad/son to be on expeditions together.

It was absolutely valid to cover bereavement management within the contents of the course.