Compliments from Gwyder Mountain Club

8th / 9th October 2022 - GMC Emergency First Aid Course Weekend (with Allan Shaw) - by Melinda Kinsman I realised the First Aid course wasn’t going to be quite what I was expecting when I caught sight of our instructor, Allan Shaw, dragging a car boot full of “bodies”, dressed in various outdoor kit, in through the front door of the hut. The “gang” were shoved into half the drying room, to await CPR training later… I was nervous that I’d never done any sort of real first aid course before, and that most of the other club members there had - but Allan assured me that this wasn’t going to be a problem. Things began fairly gently, with cards of first aid questions to match up with answers and to discuss. We started to realise and to appreciate how many years of outdoor experience Allan had, and how knowledgeable and passionate he was about first aid. Every scenario or condition we discussed was brought to life by Allan’s real life examples, mostly from his own experiences. We soon found ourselves merrily passing around “dud” epi pens to have a go at jabbing them against each other’s legs, and grappling with bandages and terrible wounds on mannequin heads and pink foam limbs. We were even able to try the famous “Heimlich manoeuvre” on someone choking - with the help of strap on vests to mimic a human windpipe with an obstruction in it. I thought it was great that the course had so much practical content. I felt this, combined with Allan’s many colourful real life anecdotes, made everything much more likely to stick in our brains. We discussed dressings and what to put in your first aid kit. (If you’re strapped for cash, try wrapping gaffer tape around a screw top bottle filled with sanitary towels and tampons!) We discussed “catastrophic bleeds”, and tried out lots of different tourniquets. We learned about recognising and treating hypothermia in the mountains, and how to make a human burrito! In fact, having seen foil blankets as useless for years, over those 2 days I discovered 2 very good uses for them. Outside the hut, we frequently assessed each other as unconscious casualties, to drill in that particular skill, and we learned easy ways to get someone into the recovery position. We also did CPR on the many different dummy “gang” members, and learned to use a wide variety of defibrillators. On day 2, things got even more “real”, with Allan setting up realistic accident scenarios - complete with gory “props”. Doug’s acting skills (as a machete victim with his guts hanging out), came a close second to Chris’ performance as the drunken friend of an unconscious Tom! To be honest, the huge amount of information Allan passed on to us during the weekend left my mind spinning, but I now feel inspired to want to read more from the booklets and links he left us with. The most important nugget of information I came home with after the course was not to be scared of doing my best and “having a go” as a first aider if someone’s life is at risk and no one with better medical knowledge is available to help. All in all, I felt I learned a huge amount from the course, and I highly recommend it to other club members if another one is arranged for us