Training, training and more training

Well this week was filled with a first aid team meeting coupled with ongoing training and also some Interagency Team Leader Training.

 

Earlier in the week my first aid team had its monthly meeting. As well as the other general business like past and upcoming duties first aid duties and introducing new team members, I also led some training in the use of Oxygen and resuscitation.

 

Let me just say this… if you’re going to use bottles of oxygen for training, make sure they’re full first as it makes it just that little bit easier to demonstrate how to use it. Oh well, we all live and learn. Well actually only one of the bottles was empty and the other one was full so it evened out.

 

What I demonstrated was setting up an oxygen bottle at the start of a first aid duty including making sure it was clean and dirt-free, choosing the right face masks and hoses, and setting everything up for use at a moments notice. I also showed which flow rates you should choose depending on if you are resuscitating or only using it for therapy, i.e. the patient can tell you where it hurts. I then gave the bottles over to the troops for a bit of a discovery and a play. We also had a play with the bag-valve-mask which is a soft-plastic bag dooberhickey that delivers between 50-98% oxygen, when normally mouth-to-mouth resuscitation is only 16%.

 

That was it for the first aid stuff and now I changed into Personal Support mode.

 

To follow this I went along to an Interagency Team Leader Training Course organised by Red Cross and run for its third time. This was an excellent opportunity to mix it with the other welfare agencies that are activated in times of emergencies. They are ADRA, Anglicare, Department of Community Services, The Salvation Army and St Vincent De Paul. Each of the agencies has very specific roles in an emergency ranging from providing food, accommodation, clothing to overall coordination.

 

In day 1 we learnt which agency did what in an emergency, leadership principles and its difference to management, motivating and retaining volunteers which includes rewards etc, managing stress and trauma and conflict management. Day 2 consisted of learning about the Incident Control System, which is basically how to control several agencies in an emergency, plus we also went through briefings and debriefings, and then finally putting it altogether into Operation Silo.

 

We did had a very interesting mini-exercise involving conflict resolution and ended up role-playing how we would solve the situation. The characters were a pair of fairly cheesed-off volunteers who felt the need to circumvent the standard operating procedures, with me playing the role of the team leader trying to sort it out, and then a mediator whose job was to get to the bottom of it all and sort out the issues. We ended up being the only group who role-played the mini-exercise and everyone was surprised and impressed we did it. Certainly was a great job by our team.

 

Finally exercise Operation Silo involved a simulated evacuation of part of a town, called Anytown (how original) and then dealing with the affected people. If that wasn’t enough we had a busload of school kids and a plane crash thrown into the mix as well just to spice it up. I also played the role of a distraught parent looking for my little Timmy and really hamming it up to my fellow Red Cross volunteers. It was fun!!!

 

The 2 days were pretty full on but a great experience to work with the other agencies and also push my own limits in terms of conflict resolution and also exercise experience. It was a great way to learn new things about what to do, how to do it and who does what when.

 

Most of the case studies and exercises revolved around extreme weather events such as flooding, cyclones and storms so was very relevant to Extreme Weather Heroes and Green Cross Australia. So there you go, increasing extreme weather events lead to increases in activations for the Emergency Services.

 

All in all it was a week filled with lots of training in first aid and personal support… Heaps of fun though :-))

 

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