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https://www.baytoday.ca/local-news/baysar-conducts-wilderness-first-aid-training-course-11460942
“It’s expanding your idea of you are not just treating and passing off to EMS right away, you may have to think about evacuations.”
It may not be the ideal time of year to run an outdoor first aid course in the north, but that didn’t stop Bay Area Search and Rescue (BAYSAR) members from conducting the first 20 hours of the 40-hour Wilderness First Aid Course, which took place the first weekend of November.
The course was conducted in connection with the Ontario Search and Rescue Volunteer Association (OSARVA) and Emergency Management Ontario.
Stan French, president of BAYSAR, says the idea is to maximize the use of volunteers in emergencies.
“The use of volunteers like BAYSAR could be an important aspect in emergency management in the future for North Bay and area,” said French.
“Part of that is making sure that we have the best possible training such as wilderness first aid. For wilderness first aid, that means you have to care for somebody in first aid type situations but you may not be able to get somebody to a hospital in less than three hours, so that’s an extra component of being able to improvise and care for someone when you know care is not just around the corner.”
French, who is actually a retired registered nurse, is taking the training himself.
Despite having nursing training dealing with trauma, he says this course is still a valuable learning opportunity.
He says the course goes much deeper than standard first aid.
“This course goes into greater depth and makes you think outside of the box. So all of a sudden, you’re with someone who has an anaphylactic reaction and there’s an EpiPen, but you know that you only have so many minutes after an EpiPen before you then have to think what is next, because the ambulance isn’t going to be 10 minutes away.
“It’s expanding your idea of you are not just treating and passing off to EMS right away, you may have to think about evacuations.”
French says an example of that is building things in the wilderness, like a makeshift stretcher.
French adds that this is a combination of everything else that BAYSAR has been doing lately.
“We’ve expanded Project Lifesaver dramatically, we just signed up our 64th client, and that’s more than double what we originally expected.”