Earlier this year, the club offered an opportunity for trip leaders to attend a first aid course run through Outdoor Education NZ (OETNZ – see: https://www.oenz.co.nz/. So one February morning, Sally and I headed to the Maungaraki Scout Club to hone our outdoor first aid skills.
The last time I’d completed a first aid course, which was quite some time ago, the training was held in a clinical white room and the only respite from wanting to claw your eyes out from boredom was the abundant lolly supply. This outdoor first aid course was something else entirely.
For starters, the assortment of other budding first-aiders – the woman to my left was a vet involved in animal rescues in natural disasters and a caving guide, and she was happily making her own tramping socks while we waited for the training to commence. The man on my right was a taxidermist and hunting instructor, who had been a hunting guide in various countries including Morocco. Everyone attending was involved in the outdoors in some capacity. Most were OETNZ instructors from various parts of the mid-lower North Island – with folks harking from lands as far away as Napier, Palmerston North and Whangarei. So it was great to connect with folk from different outdoor clubs and pursuits.
The instructor had more than a few riveting tales of his own – he’d been in the army, worked at a Tanzanian dive club and then on safari tours in Kenya before training as a medic in the UK. He was able to enrich the first aid coursework with heaps of practical examples and provide a tonne of extra techniques that you wouldn’t find in the course book alone.
Saturday – Day 1
Ahead of the weekend, we’d completed some online modules covering basic first aid and thought about different approaches to hypothetical outdoor first-aid scenarios. This meant that the first day of the course (Saturday) was far from the typical death-by-PowerPoint trainings I’d previously experienced.
We went over the basics from the online content, had heaps of opportunites to ask questions and learn extra pointers and then we focused on putting what we had learnt into practice.
About half of the course participants only attended the first day – as Day 1 also counted as the “first-aid refresher” course. The trainer catered the content to both the people who already had a lot of first aid experience and knowledge and to those of us who were relative newbies.
We all had a go at giving different types of first aid to each other and to dummies.
Some highlights included:
- learning the correct way to do CPR on a baby vs a child vs an adult,
- applying a decompression bandage for a deep wound,
- applying a torniquet for an arterial bleed,
- different techniques to help someone who is choking,
- how to carry someone using a blanket as an impromptu stretcher! (my personal favourite)
Sunday – Day 2
Sunday was attended by a smaller crew made up of those completing the full training.
In the morning we quickly covered off the remainder of the course work modules and then we participated in practical scenarios.
The scenarios covered many types of situations one could face in the Outdoors. Scenarios ranged from car accidents to falls, hypothermia, carbon monoxide poisoning, strokes, diabetic shock, and various types of injuries.
With each scenario, a couple of course participants were chosen to be unsuspecting hikers out enjoying a hike. The instructor arranged for other participants to play the role of hikers in need of different types of first aid. Some of the scenarios, which involved multiple victims, did seem a bit unlikely – it’s probably not common to encounter a group of people in the Outdoors with a range of different needs (eg someone with serious burns, another with carbon monoxide poisoning, another injured from a fall, and others with shock and mild hypothermia).
However, these scenarios involving multiple ‘victims’ did reinforce the idea that one might come across a group where individuals have different needs and gave us the opportunity to practice leadership decision making skills eg what could we do to prevent others from getting hurt or injured while we were providing assistance/ first aid to particular individuals.
We were given little time to respond when faced with these ‘multiple victim’ scenarios. This made the situation feel very real – the timeframe you’d have to respond if this was happening for real.
We also got to practice going through each step involved in responding to different types of first aid scenarios:
- triaging (assessing who [when multiple victims are involved] was most in need of urgent care)
- weighing up the risks involved in carrying an injured person to a different location – to a place more easily accessible to emergency services staff
- different ways of transporting/ carrying an injured person to a different location (based on the terrain and the type of injury)
- delegating tasks to people present and able to assist – to ensure the sick/ injured person gets the care/ assistance they need while everyone else also stays safe.
There were a lot of laughs and some participants really go into acting out their roles – to the point where a couple, who were not part of the training day, saw what was going on and came over to check if we needed them to call an ambulance.
All in all it was an excellent weekend and I think it equipped Sally and I with the knowledge and skills to feel more comfortable responding to fist aid situations that might arise while we are out leading hikes!
Items to consider for your outdoor first aid kit:
- An emergency compression bandage – for larger cuts
- Super glue – for sealing tiny straight cuts
- A tourniquet – a last resort for arterial bleeds
- A handful of band aids
- Gladwrap – for sealing and keeping burns clean
- Antihistamines
- Emergency inhaler – if travelling with people who have asthma