When lifeguarding, it’s not uncommon to want someone to fall into the pool just so you have a chance to do something. Prove that the constant training is worthwhile, relieve the boredom of a long shift, know that you will be able to react effectively in crisis. I’ve certainly felt it all.

Yet those same feelings are a little harder to justify when it’s first aid, and not in the water.

I swear I don’t want people to get injured.

Yet I admit I was hoping for something to happen today, just a little.

Today I volunteered with St John Ambulance for a Remembrance Day ceremony. I cycled in through heavy rain, arriving with damp trousers and wet hair. 

This specific Remembrance Day event was for/by the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, and the police had the entire area locked off tight. By the time I had found the right access point through the security cordon I was running slightly late, but luckily so was our mobile treatment centre.

A few fellow volunteers and I struggled to set up our tent in the mud and the rain of the parade ground, and then once we finally had our shelter set up, the sky cleared, we waited for the trickle of patients we were expecting to see.

A parade is not without hazards. Standing straight, legs locked, and then suddenly moving can lead to a faint, and many seniors attend these events who are vulnerable to hypothermia and the regular set of illnesses of old age.

Last year, St John treated 9 patients at this event, two of whom went to hospital. So for this event, like all events, we were prepared.

Two treatment centres, an ambulance, the ‘Tea Pot’ (a mobile beverage centre essential to treating hypothermia — or maybe just essential for keeping us happy), and around 20 St John volunteers, from a Doctor, a Nurse, and a Paramedic giving their valuable time, all the way down the skill levels to me.

And nothing happened.

All afternoon. 

No patients.

A couple people showed up at the other treatment centre to get off their feet for a second, and that’s it.

I’m glad, of course, that no one was injured and the event went off without a hitch.

But I will admit I was hoping to watch someone get treated, and learn a little.

I had a good time hanging out, but I’m still as green as when I first showed up.

Well, almost as green. It hopefully won’t take half an hour to figure out how to get the tent and equipment set up next time.

There were many reasons I joined up with St John ambulance to volunteer, and one of them is to get first aid experience training under someone else’s watchful eyes.

I have plenty of first aid experience. More than I probably should. Outside of my work lifeguarding, I’ve encountered 8 first aid incidents in my life.

[TW gory details. Skip if you want]

1. An elderly woman faceplanted into the pavement in front of the old IGA grocery store. I phoned an ambulance as an off-duty firefighter checked out the heavy bleeding from her face. 
2. My grandfather had a stroke, on Father’s day. I was the first to recognize it.
3. A woman sitting the edge off a bridge, having a loud argument with her boyfriend(?) and threatening to throw herself off.
4. A hypothermic naked guy was wandering around Bonnie Doon. He needed my favourite sweater more than I do. While I called for help, he (loopy out of his mind) tried to grab stuff from Safeway and was held by the security guard.
5. Screams coming from a neighbour across the street. When I (and some other neighbourhood guys) ran out, we found him being attacked by his own dog, a massive pitbull. I phoned 911 as the other neighbours tried, and failed, to get the dog off my neighbour’s arm. 
   • Pulling the dog failed
   • Stabbing the dog failed (a neighbour had garden tools out front)
   • In the end they had to choke it to death
   • His arm was bandage by another neighbours who happens to be a vet (and who did a much better job bandaging the wound than I would have), and then the police and ambulance showed up and it was all settled
6. A woman overdosing on the streets of London. When the bicycle paramedic showed up (no faster way to get around London than on an E-bike), he said it was her 3rd overdose that day.
7. A woman who fainted/collapsed at a street a market. Surrounded by people who wanted to help but didn’t know any first aid (and had already phoned for an ambulance, which she luckily didn’t need).
8. (8 is staying confidential, as it happened to a friend of mine, and I’m not sure I could anonymize it sufficiently to de-identify the incident given this is a public blog)

8 incidents is a lot, and moving to London has shown no sign of relieving me of my duty to give first aid to strangers in the street. If random first aid encounters are going to continue to be a part of my life, I figure I at least want to gain some confidence in my ability to deal with them.

I can definitely pull someone out of the water. I’m pretty confident I could do CPR.

But beyond the things we drilled constantly in the pool, I really don’t know how well I’d do. This deficit I’m hoping St John’s training will fix.

I’m currently St John’s lowest first aid rank, community first aider. They gave me 4 days of training (2 in person and 2 online), and then we meet up ~3 times a month to refresh and progress our skills.

My scope of practice is small. I can give paracetamol, aspirin, and an (over the counter) anti-histamine, bandage wounds, recognize heart attack and stroke, do CPR, and that’s pretty much the works. All the first aid you can do without specialist supplies.

For large events, I deal with the minor stuff so the Adults(TM) deal with the major things (like taking people to hospital). At my only other major event so far, a football game, I babysat a drunk guy to make sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit. Fun stuff. 

I’m admittedly not used to drunk people, so even that was a little nerve-wracking. I typically don’t do drinking hangouts with my friends as I’d much rather hike or play board games, so I suppose it was good experience actually dealing with someone properly intoxicated.

For minor events, I hang around just in case something happens. At the Gothic Garden party they sent me to (pictured at the top of the article), that meant eating good food and listening to some good (and some terrible) music.

So far as a volunteer I’ve definitely been treated well. 

If I stick around the UK, and get some experience, St John will keep training me up. The next level is Emergency responder, which would let me give oxygen, properly strong painkillers, learn how to use the really cool wound closure stuff for catastrophic bleeds, for the small cost of passing a much harder exam.

Beyond that, St John Ambulance trains volunteers for its namesake: I could join a full-on emergency ambulance crew. After a 6-month evenings-and-weekends course, they would legally certify me to do the whole thing as an EAC. (Typically London Ambulance Service runs ambulances with one EAC and one paramedic, which is a 3 year degree in the UK, though staffing can vary based on call severity.)

It’s been a really interesting hobby so far. I’ve always enjoyed learning about medical stuff, and while I hopefully won’t keep needing first aid skills in my day-to-day life, after a few years of this I should be confident that the skills are there if I need them

Oh and they’d train me up to teach first aid as well, and damn if I don’t miss teaching the Junior lifeguard club back in Edmonton. I wouldn’t say no to teaching some first aid again.