This month’s guest blog comes from Amy of Splat Training, explaining how her first aid training has adapted to be COVID-19 secure and how its still vital to continue to learn these skills even in a pandemic.
COVID-19 Safe First Aid Training
I want to put your mind at ease about First Aid Training post COVID-19. You see its all changed, I think some of you might like it better!
Anyone who has done first aid training knows how physical it is and how much human contact there is in a session. Often, when I’m training, people are already a bit ‘grossed out’ by the level of contact with strangers or colleagues, well you’re in luck. Its changed, for now and for the foreseeable future contact in first aid classes is no longer a thing!
At Splat we will follow guidance from the First Aid Awarding Organisation Forum (FAAOF), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and Qualsafe Awards. The guidance ensures you will be safe during first aid training without losing the valuable the learning experience.
We have carried out a full risk assessment of our premises and we are re-configuring our huge classroom so that social distancing is easy. We will use the same principles when we train on your premises too. Where you don’t have a large enough training room to provide socially distanced training, we would like to invite you to use our premises for training, free of charge.
In our classroom your safety will be paramount:
- Lots of new sanitizer points installed at high contact points.
- A learning space large enough that you will be 2m away from other learners and the trainer during the session.
- We are having new hand wash basins installed.
- Any shared equipment will be sanitized between uses.
- Clean equipment will be provided for every session.
- Signage will remind learners to sanitize hands regularly.
- Learners are asked to bring own snacks and biscuits.
- Sanitiser will be provided.
- Masks will be available.
New ways of learning are in development we will keep our fun collaborative approach but you won’t be put at risk:
- CPR will be learned with your own manikin or your own set of lungs (provided) so that there will be no contact there either.
- You will be taught CPR with and without breaths and we will discuss the impact COVID-19 has on your decision making in an emergency.
- To learn recovery position, you will discuss in detail how to put someone into recovery position, you will see demonstrations on screen and be assessed putting yourself in recovery position.
- When learning bandaging, where in the past you would have bandaged another learner, you will now be asked to bandage your own leg. All the same principles of dealing with an injury will be taught.
- Choking will be learned through detailed description and demonstration and you will demonstrate on a manikin.
New approaches to the booking and administration side of things:
- All delegates will be screened at booking and on arrival.
- We will collect and store data safely for track and trace purposes.
- If a learner develops symptoms before or during training, we will send them home to watch the telly.
- If a learner develops symptoms after training, we will track and trace those people on that course.
- New terms and conditions cover all of these new procedures.
- Where someone decides they cannot attend because they have COVID-19 Symptoms we offer to reschedule the date at NO EXTRA COST!
We think these extensive new procedures go above and beyond the basic requirements. We are determined that COVID-19 will not impair your experience of first aid training with Splat. If you have any further suggestions or worries, we would love to hear about them, we’re willing to learn from you.
Finally, you will be pleased to know we are going to try to keep our prices the same. Training at your own site may have to be slightly more expensive if your training room is too small to safely provide all your delegates with 2m social distancing. This may mean we have to deliver 2 separate training days. We will provide your second day at a discount OR you can come to our beautiful rural classroom, where we can provide 12 socially distanced seats at no extra cost.
The extra cost of PPE and new equipment will be absorbed by Splat for now, fingers crossed we can pick up enough new business to help us thrive. If you can help us with that by sharing this article and referring your friends, we’d be very grateful.
Stay safe folks, see you soon.
Amy at Splat
For more information, please visit Amy’s website, or call her on 0779 6872170 or email [email protected]
