Your First Aid Stories: First Aid Saved my Son's Life
Learning First Aid is an empowering experience. You may walk
in to the class feeling uncertain and insecure about your skills.
You should come away from the class feeling confident and prepared
and valuable. So many people are frightened to learn first aid and
think that they won’t be able to do it in a crisis. I wanted
to tell you the story about how First Aid saved my sons life and hear
about your stories where First Aid helped.
My son, Luke, choked on a grape when he was 13 months and would not
be here today were it not for the actions of our nanny who administered
Basic Life Support until the ambulance arrived. His lungs collapsed
completely and he was on a life support machine at Great Ormond Street
hospital for 5 long days. We were told that if he made it at all,
severe brain damage was inevitable.
Seven years on, and 8 year old Luke is in perfect health mentally and physically. We call him our miracle child and still can’t quite believe that he is absolutely fine. Every day I wake up and remember how lucky we are.
The doctors at Great Ormond Street talked about the ‘chain of survival’ which is made up of all of the people involved in helping an accident victim to survive. The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In the case of Luke, the first link of the chain, our nanny, was strong and then luckily so too were the others.
Ironically, I had just started to offer First Aid classes through my company – The Parent Company. We had run one class for 20 participants the month before Luke’s accident and had another scheduled for the month after. Luke’s accident crystallised for me, what a responsibility it was to teach First Aid. I sat down with my business partner, Dr Peter Thompson who is a Paediatric Emergency consultant, and took a long hard look at the Basic Life Support Classes we offered at The Parent Company. I knew from personal experience that First Aid can save lives and I wanted to make sure that the classes that we offered created the best possible learning environment.
We came up with an approach that seems to work and revolves around
classes
- that are small enough for everyone to receive attention and care,
but large enough to allow participants to learn from each other as
well as the teacher,
- taught by nurses with paediatric experience who are knowledgeable
and sensitive to the needs of parents,
- can be taught in peoples own homes because that is where they are
most comfortable.
In the first year or so after Luke’s accident I found it difficult to rationally discuss First Aid, or grapes, with friends or customers. I was overzealous and keen to convince them to learn First Aid at any costs. I would march up to strangers feeding their children grapes in supermarkets and lecture them about cutting grapes in half, I would surprise test my friends and family to check that they were ready to administer First Aid at any time. I have now learnt that scare tactics do not work. Parents are already scared about the potential accidents and injuries that could befall their children, and if they have not learnt First Aid, it is probably because they are having trouble facing their fear.
Now I focus on trying to instil confidence in parents. Our classes are all about empowering parents and helping them to believe in themselves and their ability to manage in an emergency.
I get such pleasure from making this training available to parents and hearing stories about how it has helped in an accident or injury situation. Please e-mail me at kerri@theparentcompany.co.uk
