Vision 21: why first aid cover is important

First aid is an important tool for any organisation and gives assurances that team members are equipped to deal with medical emergencies quickly and efficiently. We recently heard from our very own Reuse Network member, Vision 21, on why first aid cover is so important for reuse organisations:

“At Reclaim (Vision 21’s furniture reuse scheme), we split ourselves into two teams when it comes to First Aid. We space the re-certification points roughly half way between each other. In this way, we know we would always have sufficient cover available should there be any delay in re-certification. Also, as an added precaution against staff/volunteer turnover to take account of people leaving, we have always been fairly generous with the number of people we select/invite to do first aid training.

No one could have predicted the effects Covid would have had on an organisation, but this belt and braces approach served us pretty well, as it meant we had sufficient cover throughout the pandemic, even when one first aid team’s cover expired whilst operating at a skeletal level. Now that things are returning to normal, we are in the process of re-establishing “forgotten” routines and procedures, one of which being First Aid.

On Friday of last week, we pulled together whoever remained of our now uncertificated First Aid team and placed them with 3 new employees who were doing a formal First Aid course for the first time. No one knows when a First Aider can be called upon to do their duties, but our timing could not have been better, because the following day one of our new employees had to go into action, when a woman started choking in our store.

Fortunately Tim, a former volunteer and now one of the new employees was on hand and his reaction was up to the mark. On seeing the situation, he immediately took charge and asked the lady to bend over and he took up a position next to her. Then with his hand, he gave her a controlled, directional thump on her back, just has he had been instructed to do so using the practice dummy the day before. Out popped the obstruction on the first try. All was well.”