Remote Emergency Care - REC 2 / part 2

Sunday 8:30 in the morning we are on our way to day 2 of training, it should be the one step up from module10 and REC1. It was clear and cold, a fantastic day for outdoor activities, we expected a lot of training scenarios and we got them.

There were people with embedded glass in their hands, cuts, burns, sprained ankles, broken legs, fell climbers on top of each other, epileptic seizures, chocking, hypothermic and a lot of shouting for help.

"I tried to pick the pot up to move it..."

It was all enhanced with the make-up of realistic wounds, blood flowing and things sticking out... Oh we did enjoy today's training!

Each one of us would alternate between casualty and first aid crew. We all played our roles without trying to laugh it off as "not real" and the weird thing is that in my mind I can only describe what we did based on what the scenarios were staged and developed as and not as a bunch of role playing acting exercises. I felt that we were making first aid efforts and decisions. Now that builds confidence!

Time to put together a simple first aid kit, something that will easily be expanded for a group of 10 and it will have scope for a 1h or more emergency care. This must be coupled with prepared and trained scouts, if one scout needs care the whole group will need to adapt their roles to assist evacuation, on that we can be trained to a high standard. In fact this might even make first aid programmes fun to run, I bet young members love bloody and gory details in their first aid training. Add to that bevy bag casualty lift and move, you got a load of fun first aid achieved!

If you are an adult or young leader in scouts, guides or any other youth based organisation, do seek and get trained in REC2, you'll love it!

Our training course was organised by Berkshire Scouts and run by the very competent and herself an explorers scout leader, Julia Pich. If you scout anywhere near Hertfordshire Do contact her!

Her services can be reached at www.juliapichtraining.co.uk

Now, where do they order that badge from...