St John’s First Aid course with a ‘Real Life’ twist

On Saturday the 11^th of May, St John’s WA conducted a full day first aid course in the Fremantle Sailing Club’s State room for 13 members from the Angling, Power and Dive sections of the Club.

The course objective was to provide members of each section the opportunity to update, or gain, a first aid certificate that would enable them to either take out the Club boat “Success”, or, have personnel with first aid training during a section’s organized event.

Funding for this was the result of a grant applied for and received through RecfishWest, together with some additional support from the Club. Run by St John’s trainer Bertina, the course was extremely successful.

Approximately a half hour into the course the participants were divided into pairs and asked to take turns in placing their respective partners into a recovery position on the floor.

Within minutes of this commencing, one of the participants stood up and had to take a seat after noting that they were suffering from vertigo.  This was noted by the instructor, who suggested that the person take a short break and resume when they were feeling better.

About three quarters of an hour passed before the persons partner realized that they were in fact, appearing to be getting worse.  Symptoms by this stage included a feeling of nauseousness, appearing somewhat pale, sweating and shivering.  Needless to say, this began to refocus the class instructor and all participants and as a result, all current activities were temporarily suspended.

After providing cool cloths and discussing the situation with those immediately involved, it soon became apparent that the situation was deteriorating when the now ‘patient’ began to vomit and hold their hand to their chest.

At this stage it was decided to call an ambulance and the St John’s First Responder App was used in what had literally developed into a ‘real life’ situation.

The summary of this story is that an ambulance crew attended, assessed the ‘patient’ and after some further medical care, took the person out of the course to a suitable location to recover.  Fortunately, hospitalization was not required.

The course did resume and all persons attending, I’m sure, received and benefited far more than was anticipated, all of which was the benefit, as previously stated, of receiving a grant through RecfishWest and the support of the Club

John Cramer