First Aid Course Experience

[River Song]

OK - Here's my take. I finished the 3 day St Johns First Aid at Work course and must say
that it was very good indeed given the context. There was a lot of material on 3 x 6 hour days
but the pace was good and the manner of training assisted the assimilation of material
and at the end, I really DO feel trained. If you have no first aid knowledge and you can get someone to
pay for this course or blag it from your workplace, do it. If you are in a workplace environment, your employer
would probably love to pay for this as it protects them and anyway it is a HSE requirement.

Downsides

As someone else said, you are there until the emergency services arrive and take control.
As preppers we ask the question - What happens when there are no emergency services?
This was a question I felt unable to ask during my training with St Johns. They just weren't that
kind of people. ergo, my question about Duct Tape, superglue and Sanitary Towels. Last day I suggested that in case
of breathing difficulties I could always use my Gerber knife and do an instant tracheotomy. (They went WHITE)

But these are the situations that we will find ourselves in.

NO ambulance
NO Doctors
No Nurses
Just You

Now is the time to read and train yourself. It would be nice to get some military types to train us but meantime
what commercially is available.

Wilderness Training Course might be appropriate to add to the skills and any kind of military field surgery manual
might come in handy. Having said that I don't think we are going to need to do massive invasive surgery. Might need to remove an ingrowing toenail under Lidocaine but if you need to cut open someone?? Nah sorry - I think they are going to die. Make them comfortable and if you have morphine and can spare it - use it -- otherwise you need to stock up on Vodka!!

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