First Aid

For this day, Year 8 were learning about first aid, but specifically I looked at the recovery position. The students were learning about the recovery position and what to do if they found someone that needed to be put in it.

First of all, we observed Mr Ryden demonstrating the position, then a keen student stepped forward and pretended to be a stranger in need of help. As an extra test that other students had seen his position and knew that it was wrong, so again a student stepped forward and corrected him. Eventually the students went off on their own and they practiced the position many times; they swapped roles so that the whole group knew what the position was and how to perform it in an emergency. If the students were unsure, they had a booklet labelled: Life Saving Guide, or they could ask the rotating teachers.

We asked a selection of students some questions about this particular lesson. One of them said, “I don’t think you would need it often, but you never know when you will bump into a situation where you might need the information.”- Chloe. Another explained to me that, “This can benefit us, I want to be a teacher and children are unpredictable, you never know when you might need to use this on a child.”- Anna-Louise. Evie also told us that, “It’s always good to be qualified in first aid,” The students were all really keen to accomplish the position correctly.

We were told that the head needs to be in a certain position to stop the person from choking on their own vomit and that before you begin the recovery positon you should make sure that all accessories are out of the way and that there is a clear space to do the position. These were the first two steps that we were told but one of the students, Keira, explained 4 more of them.

1. Make sure the person is safe from sharp objects that may be laying by the person

2. Take the arm nearest to you and place it on a right angle to their body

3. Bring the other arm to their chest and put back of their hand on their cheek

4. Carry on holding their hand to their cheek and bend their leg further away and pull up

We also observed the lesson on strokes where the students had to make leaflets about strokes. They had to write about what a stroke was, how to identify if it was a stroke or not and how to help a person if they were experiencing a stroke. Some students said that this had convinced them to pursue a career as a paramedic or in another area of medicine.

At the end of the session, all the students said that they thoroughly enjoyed the learning experience and that all the information would be extremely useful in their lives now and in their future lives even if they didn’t want to take it up as a career.