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Jason Wilding, Loch Ken Seasonal Ranger
Think you know about first aid?
So did I, and I’ve needed many a plaster, micropore or Sellotape and a blob of Germolene to put me back together!
To make sure I was fully equipped to deal with any (human) emergency that a ranger might encounter, I recently attended the Rescue Emergency Care, outdoor first aid training, run by Adamson adventures.
There we as so much ground to cover in 2 days we barely touched on plasters, bandages or slings and focussed on catastrophic bleeding, resuscitation and major trauma. The instructor (David) was keen for us to be able to bring any mortal soul back from beyond the brink in any given situation, and this was before 10am on a Sunday morning. There were casualties up a mountain, a road traffic accident, a capsized canoe in a burgeoning river, we even rescued a group of disoriented travellers from a veg bed in a poly tunnel.
Realism was the order of the day and through several realistic scenarios with running chainsaws (resulting in the loss of a limb with fake blood, prosthetic wounds and realistic screams) to bicycles crushed by an errant motorist, white water rafting accidents, rock climbing failures, drunken street brawls, you name it, it was covered.
We were actually learning how to assess the scene of an incident, look for ongoing dangers, prioritising who were the walking wounded and who needed immediate attention, figuring out how to call for help in remote situations and how to utilise people and objects close by to ensure casualties had the best chance of survival – at least until someone who really knew what they were doing turned up to take over.
The training was so authentic one attendee managed to receive a self-inflicted eye injury whilst sat in the classroom; waiting for the course to begin, however as it was non-life threatening, we quickly assessed him and went in search of more worthy casualties. The 2 days were both light-hearted and serious at the same time, and we all learned some new rhymes to help us remember where to start and how to assess a situation, gained a wealth of understanding and some confidence to help us deal with a real-life situation should it occur.
So, if you’re out and about on Loch Ken and need some assistance, (hopefully not on the scale of the scenarios outlined above) and perhaps you need a plaster and some Germolene, (we’re out of Sellotape at the moment) hopefully we’re much more knowledgeable now and may be able to help.
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