Today I had to attend a CPR refresher course, apparently I and everyone else who has done a first aid certificate forgets the CPR rules within the space of a year. So we've been told anyway. That means we have to do the refresher.
That's cool, I get paid to attend so it gets me away from the office for a day. I even bumped into a guy called Phil who I used to play football with for many years, we're both older and fatter now and his "young lad" is 22, time flies huh, but I digress.
One of the things we are taught to do when we begin giving CPR to a person is to ask all bystanders to move away and give you some room, then you ask one of them to call an ambulance and ask them explain to the ambulance dispatch that you have an unconscious person and you are about to commence CPR. That got me thinking.
Perth is by all intentions now a mining town, a vast majority of people who live here work in mining or a mining related support industry. Those that don't, work for companies that are insured by the same companies that insure the mining industry. It is a requirement for working in the mining industry that you have a first aid certificate, the insurance companies demand it. Those same companies now demand that workers in all companies they insure also have first aid certificates. So what you have in this town is a shite load of people with first aid training.
This brings me back to the moment I am about to commence CPR, I ask the bystanders to step back, except there are no bystanders in Perth these days, everyone's a friggen medical expert and they're pushing each other out of the way to commence CPR on this poor patient and they're all looking down their noses at the one dude who doesn't have a certificate and has agreed to go call an ambulance...pffft what a loser.
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