BSAC London No.1 Branch

On Wednesday 21st November we were lucky enough to receive a First Aid training course from the London Ambulance Service. Norman, our trainer, has been an Ambulance Technician in South London for over ten years and passed a wealth of practical knowledge on to us during the two hour session. The course was well attended with fourteen London Branch members attending.

The London Ambulance Service (LAS) and British Heart Foundation have been campaigning to improve Basic Life Support (BLS) skills in London. This has proven to be a success with the survival rate from heart attack improving from less than 10% to over 15% in the last couple of years. This is a remarkably low percentage of the 10,000 or so cardiac arrests that LAS receive calls for per year but shows how much the campaign can achieve in a short space of time.

I’ll use the rest of the article to talk about some of the skills we learned on the course. Of course my waffling is no substitute for a real First Aid course so if you don’t understand anything here you may want to have a word with our Training Officer!

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