Early last week the my ministry team and I took a (infant, child, and adult) CPR, AED, & First Aid Training offered through the local Red Cross chapter. We did 75% of the coursework online in the weeks leading up to the class, and only had to take a 3 hours “hands-on” course to get certified. It really was super easy, but wish it would have been cheaper.
Some thoughts:
- I’m not sure why I’ve neglected doing this in the past. It’s weird actually that I’ve been working with kids all these years, and have always relied on others to have CPR training.
- That 3 hour class ended up being 5 hours. Why on God’s green earth would you bring 4 test dummies when 5 are in the class? Geesh…
- Did you know this? Now I do and I can’t quite figure out how to reconcile it in my brain. I do want to save someone life, but wouldn’t you get some strange looks if you started doing this to a woman before administering the AED?
- We were also told to do this before using the AED? And if a shaving kit isn’t nearby…we were told to use the sticky AED surfaces to remove it manually…Again, what kind of looks would I get from the gawking crowd if I started ripping out chest air?
- After taking the course I really got to thinking how sad it is that we don’t have an AED on our entire campus. Did you know that for every minute a person in cardiac arrest doesn’t get an AED rescue that their chances for survival go down 10%? Scary, huh?
- We used the breathing barriers during training, and were offered them to buy afterwards. Just a word to those that work with me. If you delay giving me CPR by even 1 second so you can track down your breathing barrier and stay clean, I will come back and haunt you from beyond the grave. Just be warned…
If you’re one of those that works with kids, then please for the love of God go get trained on what to do. I can guarantee you that if you’re the Children’s Pastor and an emergency comes up, you will be the person they look to for help anyways. So bring all your choking babies, head injuries, and broken legs to me; cause I’m ready for it…maybe…perhaps…ok go ahead and bring them.
