As part of my progress towards the Mountain Leader (Summer) qualification I am required to undertake a 16 hour First Aid course with a bias specifically towards the types of injuries and illnesses that may be encountered when exploring the mountains and moorlands of Britain.
I (along with 11 other friendly folk) did mine with Peak Mountaineering at The Hollowford Centre in Castleton over the Saturday and Sunday of last weekend. The course was very thorough, highly professional and used a good mixture of theory and practice. We covered a wide range of subjects including CPR, dealing with fractures and wounds, hypothermia, hyperthermia, stings and bites, protecting the casualty from the elements, improvised slings and splints and what a First Aid kit could/should contain. In order to cement our learning, we spent the last afternoon dealing with a variety of scenarios which required us to put into practice the skills we had been learning over the previous sessions.
First Aid is one of those rare skills where once you have learned it, you never ant to have to use it....none-the-less after this weekend of instruction I feel much better prepared should the occasion arise at some stage in the future!
I did a nav course with Peak ages ago really enjoyed it. This sounds like it was a good course and yeah you're spot on one of those skills you don't really want to use. I've been thinking about doing one of these for a while now. In fact I started a WGL a few years ago done the initial training segment etc got the required log book entires just need to get on with the first aid and assessment, I'm seriously thinking of cracking on and completing it.
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