As part of my ongoing Quality Assurance commitment to Qualmark NZ for the wine tour business, I was recently required to get a First Aid certificate, being as I am - a driver of passengers for hire.
I had thought that being an ex-physio and having a dusty old CPR certificate was OK ... but nope. I would not get my Endorsed Visitor Activity sticker unless I 'fulfilled all outstanding requirements' of the QA programme.
So off I went, at the ungodly hour of 8.00 a.m. to St Johns Ambulance training centre in Mt Wellington - luckily 5 mins down the road. The class was a real mix of ages and ethnicities - I was second oldest in the class. There were young high school students, Indian taxi drivers, Asian Uni students, and an ex-Southern States drug & alcohol rehab operator called Tom - pronounced Taarm. Tom was my desk buddy so we ended up taking turns being the patient or the first aider. Our creaky old knees barely coped with all the squatting and kneeling, let alone trying to do 60 or more chest compressions on a mannequin. If you collapse near me - I'm good for about three minutes of CPR - then you're on your own.
By lunch we'd done Scene Assessment, Bleeding and Shock, CPR (adult child and baby), plus Seizures, Choking (adult child and baby), Convulsions and Cardiac Arrest. Then I had a bread roll and the worst automated flat white coffee I'd ever consumed. It was one of those machines that spurts out latte, black coffee, cappuccino, mocha, hot chocolate, soup, tea, gravy, béchamel sauce, pina colada and yoghurt.
Basically everything tastes the same.
After lunch we did Burns, Poisoning, Sprains and Fractures. We were regularly assessed en masse and pulled up for any bad technique. But in the end - we all passed. We got our certificates, and proudly marched out, ready to rescue!!!
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