01/18/2012
A Second Go at First Aid
“Mom….Please don’t make me do this.” I pleaded and pleaded with her while she was gazing at the rows of smart looking uniformed kids in the square. “You’re not seriously going to make me participate in that are you?” I asked her. Her response was however, “Just give it a try, you’ll never know if you like it if you’ve never done it”. “How could you possibly expect me to enjoy doing this?” I’d be eating those words by that time next month.
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When I first joined St John Ambulance, I was hesitant. Watching the cadets march around and perform drill while wearing “dorky” uniforms wasn’t the best introduction to this program I would imagine. But the more I went to these meetings, the more I learned to see through the uniform aspect of this organization. The more I went, the more I learned; not just in first aid knowledge however, I actually attribute most of my social skills to this program as well. St John Ambulance not only taught me first aid, it taught me how to interact and collaborate with people, how to be a leader, but most importantly, it taught me to try new things.
Returning to St John, I’m hoping to reinforce my knowledge of basic first, and to learn the Medical First Responder course. This includes the treatment of severe bleeding, shot, respiratory conditions, heat and cold injuries, poisons, bites, stings, head and spine injuries, and tons more. Hopefully, I can master this 40 hour course by the end of the in depth program to showcase what I’ve learned.
Ever since I’ve joined first aid, I’ve always had peace of mind back in the back of my head. The feeling of knowing that you have the skill to help in case of injury is reassuring and gives me confidence even. The fact that I can learn an even more intensive course is great because after learning MFR, I’ll know how to react in case of a severe accident. Just knowing that you have the ability to save or improve a life if the need arises makes me happy and contributes to my goal of being more involved in the community. Hopefully, this course can even allow me to volunteer more and support our public events.
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A student at UBC, a divisional training officer at SJA, but most importantly my mentor, will be Vincent Chan. He will assist me in learning the MFR course along with other trained instructors to make sure I am understanding how to treat each injury. We will meet every week on Tuesdays for MFR classes and will help me in completing it. He started going to SJA in high school and has been there ever since. Other people assisting me in this project will be Patrick Chung, an instructor at SJA as well as two peers of mine who go to Gleneagle and have also learned MFR. Hopefully, this will let me practice even outside each weekly meeting. By the time in depth is supposed to be presented, I hope to bring a few medals from competitions to show.
Side Note: So this is my third attempt at a “Second Go at First Aid”. I really wish that i was joking but I’m actually not; Edublogs seems to hate me.
