Friends Teaching First Aid

Not everyone can afford or make it to first aid classes. It is unfortunate because it is so important to know. However, certain people in your life may be able to teach you the basics or even important things a class at the Red Cross may not teach you.

My husband is an officer and was in the military and he taught me basic first aid and then some. His friend was a medic in the military and he was also able to teach me some things.

Youtube is great and so are articles, but if you can't go to a class, veterans, police officers, fire fighters, nurses, EMT's are awesome to ask for pointers. Most are more than happy to tell you what to do for certain situations so that you can survive or you can have someone else survive. So next time you're around someone with experience, strike up a conversation, their knowledge may be able to save your life.

 

I completely agree with this. After all, trained professionals are the ones who usually teach these classes anyways so learning from them outside of a class is no different. The only downfall is that they might not have the equipment necessary to do the demonstrations you would see in a class. But a lot of the first aid stuff I learned was actually taught to me by my step father, who was in the military when I was growing up, and he was able to still teach me enough.

 

This is actually false in most cases, at least in Europe. Well ok of course the teachers are trained professionals too but my point is that the qualification required to be allowed to teach first aid is it's own qualification, one that is much harder to obtain than a simple first aid one. Just because someone knows a thing or two about first aid it doesn't mean that they make good teachers. It's the same when teaching a lot of things: I'm fluent in English but would I say that I'm a capable English teacher? No, I certainly wouldn't.

I have a strong belief that basic first aid should be taught in schools. It only takes a day and being taught on such a large scale, I'm sure it would save lives. The Red Cross sometimes offers free first aid classes, you should also ask your employer about it. I've seen many cases where an employer has chosen to pay for a couple people in his staff to have a first aid qualification.

Also, be careful of youtube. How do you know the guy is who he says he is? How do you know that he has actual real life experience treating wounded people?

 

Sometimes classes are given for free at my local fire department. I'm not sure that certifications are provided, however. If a person wants a more relaxes and yet hands on approach, I think this would be good way to go if certification for employment isn't necessary.

 

Well it's free so you've got absolutely nothing to lose, right? It's still worth asking about some sort of certificate, even if it's just a paper that says you participated in their class.

 

Even if there is no certificate, the added time practicing the material would be beneficial to someone who plans to test for the certification. First aid is such a critical skill, that any practice and experience that could impact a person's ability to perform first aid correctly should be taken advantage of.

 

I feel like it's harder to learn first aid from Youtube because you need to feel the body and the area you're acting on, that's why people in the army and the medical field are trained with mannequines (you can't really do it on a human because you risk breaking their ribs, it's a rough move). Definitely learn from someone that knows how to properly do it if you have the chance, it's a crucial skill especially in survival.

 

yeah any proper training you can get, whether or not you want or need a certificate, is always an advantage. There are quite a few organisations doing free first aid courses... I'd highly encourage everyone to see if there are some in your area and even consider traveling a bit if necessary.

 

Well it's important to also keep practicing your skills. It can be incredibly nerve wracking to be put in a situation like that in the first place. Practice can really help that!

 

hi you are right Dear these skills are extremely important we never know accidents happen in country sides where it can take hours to get to the hospitals! so it's good to have some basic knowledge of what you can do if such thing happens, however I have busy friends but thanks to the better health channels I follow now I learnt a lot of things so far, so we don't have to lean to people only we can also teach ourselves and practice these knowledge while working as volunteers to become better.

 

I’m a medic at my work site and have a registered nurse as a wife so we always toss around information to keep refreshed on it. I would recommend people who want to gain a bit of free knowledge in this area is joining a volunteer search and rescue or volunteer fire department if available . My time on the SAR team gave my a pile of info before having any first aid training and it didn’t cost a thing only 1 hour a week and got to practice scenarios monthly in different environments.

 

A really good source of info for fist aid and emergency medicine is "The Patriot Nurse" on YouTube