Okay-- so at this point if you're following, I've been given a grand tour of the grandiose Macc Library and am quite jealous, and have sat through one of the most useless and depressing trainings ever, had my nice Subway lunch, thusfar the best thing about the day....
I'm ready for Emergency First Aid!!
*not*
It's just gone 1pm... we're all sitting there in a nice semi-circle... all eleven of us... chatting quite happily... the poor lady who has organised both these trainings is clucking around like a frantic mother hen because the lady doing the training hasn't arrived yet. The training was meant to start at 1. She's phoned the emergency number twice and not gotten through, and she's not had any calls to say the lady isn't coming or is running late or is lost etc.
At 1:15, the trainer arrives... looking rather perplexed that we're all sat there in this semi-circle... then she says "The training starts at 1:30, right?"
ummmmm, no.
ooops.
So she gets her stuff ready in a hurry and begins. She sounds EXACTLY (and I mean exactly!!) like Ricky Gervais on the tv show The Office. Same sarcastic tone of voice-- same part of the country accent, same faces... everything. I find it extremely hard not to laugh once it occurs to me where I have heard the accent/voice from. Especially when she is doing the sarkey rhetorical questions like he does on the show.
She starts off telling us what kinds of injuries and conditions we're going to cover today-- listing them off and then saying "and then we'll cover injuries that are more likely to occur in your place of business..." at which point I am DYING to quip "like papercuts??"
but I was good.
Ricky Gervais-voice aside, the information was really helpful and I'm going to try and remember the things she taught us, because as she said, it's not just useful at work-- you could be anywhere when something could happen and either you're first on the scene or you're there already. And I am like the quintessential girl scout always wanting to be prepared!!
Funnily enough-- the other Crewe lib. worker who was at the trainings, Stuart, has been on a FULL first aid course less than 9 months ago. During our training, she was constantly asking questions about what signs/symptoms we are going to be looking for. I was feeling chatty and kept tossing out answers, and so did Stuart-- unfortunately for him... they were wrong ones!!! eeeks. It was weird. I was trying to think of any other first aid courses I've ever had, but I can't remember any offhand. I know I've been on one at some point... because I remember learning how to do CPR. There is a pretty good website that gives animated illustrations of how to give CPR to all different ages of people... They even have instructions (no illustrations though!) on how to give CPR to your dog or cat!!! FLUFFY, CAN YOU HEAR ME??
We also learned how to open people's airways and put them into the recovery position... although the way we did it differs from that website in that we were taught to put the arm they're rolling onto -- to have it bended at the elbow, and put at right angles to their head... so that their other hand, which is supporting the head, comes to rest on their arm.
interesting stuff...
way more useful than the safer handling? you bet.