St. John Ambulance Wilderness 1st Aid Level 1 - Day 1

last weekend, i joined the St. John Ambulance Wilderness 1st Aid (Level 1) course, organised by Malaysian Outdoor Trekking Hiking society (MOTHs). this is my first time joining a MOTHs event, and i should say they're an interesting and fun bunch of ppl...

this course is a 2D 1N thing, held at Awana Genting Long House. i think few ppl knew that awana genting has a camp site and long house tucked within its grounds. my previous company used to do seminars there at least once a month and i've been there more than 4 times, but i didn't know abt this little bit of info!

anyway, the event was scheduled to start at 8am and we were supposed to meet at 7am for breakfast at a mamak shop in gohtong jaya... so that means my carpool ride had to come get me at 6am, which means i need to be up latest by 5.15am!

but i had so many things to do the previous night, that i only managed to start packing at 1am... dilly dally a bit, this and that, and i only went to bed at 3am!!! so basically i only had 2 hrs plus of sleep... haiz... i really need to plan my time better, especially on the night before i'm to go on trips!

anyway, we made it to the ratha restaurant right on time, at 7am, and i get to meet most of the participants. some are first timers like me, but most of them knew each other from other MOTHs events before this...

after breakfast, we made our way into the 'jungle part' of awana genting, where the long house and camp site is.

going into the hutan...

we were a convoy of abt 20 cars that day...

finally caught sight of the long house...

the open balcony where some of the participants slept at night,
but not me. i slept at the roofed section in my sleeping bag...

preparing the place to begin our 1st aid theory...

ice-breaking session... we were supposed to intro our own name, and then call out all the names of the persons standing before us. eg. "hi, i'm C, and i met A and B at awana genting long house." i was unfortunate enough to be standing after a guy called Trip, short of Triptipal. the guy before him was Vegee (i know, weird name). so after a while, the 3 of us became "Vegee strip Sue"... =_='''

our handouts... look how thick it is!! *sweat*

practical session. this is how we do the "head tilt chin lift"

2 fingers under the jawline to push up, and the "karate chop"
on the forehead to push down. this is to clear the airways...

our turn to do the cpr... always remember dr abc.
D = check for danger before approaching the victim

R = check for response
"hello sir, r u ok?!" while tapping the shoulders firmly

ask for help. "excuse me miss, pls call 999 for ambulance! and get back to me pls..."

A = clear the airway by doing the 'head tilt, chin lift' and 'listen, look and feel' for any breathing...

B = breathing. give 2 blows, making sure our mouths cover the victim's mouth completely to prevent air from escaping, while pinching the victim's nose (the reason for making the 'karate chop' on the forehead during 'head tilt, chin lift' - so that we can just reach down to pinch the nose while our palms are still pressing onto the victim's forehead), and look for the rising and falling of the chest...

after 2 blows, check again for response...

C = circulation. place one palm on the sternum (at the middle of the nipple line),
the other palm on top in a finger lock and compress down with elbows straight.
and no, we don't need to smile... hehe...
my cameraman: "still can smile some more! the victim die oredi lar wei!"

do 30 compressions to the beat of ABBA's "Staying Alive" (i'm not joking!)

after 30 compressions, give another 2 mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. this is considered 1 round. we need to do 5 rounds of this before stopping to check for response again. if still no response, do another 5 rounds of 30 compresisons + 2 blows... continue until help arrives or we collapse from exhaustion, whichever comes first!

after that, we broke for lunch. some participants stayed back to do their own cooking in true camping style over a bonfire. the rest of us drove out to gohtong jaya for some restaurant food...

after lunch was theory session... all the way to dinner. so can imagine the tortured-lack-of-sleep state i was in! i was just struggling to keep my eyes open and focus on what the coordinators were saying...

after dinner, we had some practical sessions...
here, we're taught to do the different kinds of bandages...

this is called the ring bandage, or 'donut'

ring bandages can be used for knife stabs if the knife is still sticking to the wound...

here we're learning to do the reef knot...

this is an arm sling...

the arm sling i did on my partner... nice ler? (the arm sling, not the partner!)

this is an elevation sling, mainly used for broken colar bones or shoulder blades...

my elevation sling...

we also learnt how to move a victim onto a stretcher... my job here
is to push in the stretcher after the guys have lifted up the 'victim'

how to immobilize the neck... always assume a neck
or spine injury when a victim has fallen from a high place!

we were introduced to 2 way radio as well...

later that night, we had a mock night rescue exercise... here we're getting ready to go out into the jungle after receiving a 'distress call'. we're not supposed to be this happy in actual cases... hehe...

our 'victim' had fallen from a tree (god knows what's he doing up there in the
dead of the night!), so we had to use the spineboard, instead of the normal stretcher...

getting ready to strap the 'victim' onto the spineboard and get him out of the hutan...

debriefing... basically discussion on what we've done right and wrong, what we shouldn've done etc...

after that, we took our bath and rolled out our sleeping bags! it's been a long and tiring day... *yawn*