16 cadets from 2425 (Nottingham Airport) Squadron successfully completed the British Heart Foundations Heartstart course in September. Heartstart schemes are run across the UK by different organisations. The Air Training Corps is one of the biggest! It is estimated that to date 2.6 million people have been trained through Heartstart.
The courses are aimed for anyone to learn the complete range of Emergency Life Support Skills (ELS) needed to save a life.
The Heartstart program includes skills such as:
- Assessing an unconscious patient, (Recovery Position)
- Performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR),
- Dealing with choking,
- Serious bleeding,
- Helping someone that may be having a heart attack.
Knowing what to do when someone has a cardiac arrest is important. If you can do CPR you can buy the time needed for professional help to arrive and save the life of your loved one. Being able to do CPR more than doubles their chance of survival.
The British Heart Foundations designed the “Heartstart course” to follow the current Resuscitation Council (UK) guidelines. The course lasts for two hours and provides practical hands-on learning, which is vital to someone’s chances of survival.
The Heartstart course is one of the many courses available for them to learn skills needed to save a life. The course was run by FS (ATC) Street who is a qualified Heartstart Instructor.
The cadets all enjoyed the practical side of the course, where they could get hand on. They espically enjoyed putting someone in the recovery position, performing CPR and bandaging!
The training suite used to deliver the course is very good and interactive. The "real life" movie clips of accidents have been recenlty up-dated and offer a better realistic situation which anyone may come across.
