HALF PRICE FIRST AID COURSE

As I have plans to be away quite a lot during the summer, I’m making an early start to try to see if we can run a First Aid Course in October or November this year. For anyone who does not know, we successfully ran courses in 2008 /9/10 /11 and 2012 but we didn’t get enough people together last year.

Sooner or later, if you spend time in the mountains, you may need to manage a casualty or apply some first aid. We have encountered a number of emergency situations over the years. If you are several hours from help it makes sense for every mountain-goer to know the basics.

The most appropriate training is arguably the Rescue Emergency Care Level 2 16-hour course.
A Certificate of Attendance on this course is the basic level of first aid which is required for those applying for (or continuing to hold) Summer or Winter MLC, also SPA and I believe other sports.
The REC Level 2 is a 2-day course particularly oriented to first aid in a mountain environment, and it obviously covers all the stuff eg wounds, breakages, heart attacks, hypothermia etc etc.
There is no examination, but upon completion of the course you get a Certificate valid for 3 years.

The normal “market” cost to attend a course was about £120, likely a bit more now, and on top of that you would normally have to travel to (eg) Hathersage or Plas-y-Brenin or somewhere, so with fuel and accommodation your wallet would be lightened to the tune of about £180.

However, in previous years YMC has been able to hire an Instructor and a York venue, and put together a private course for YMC Members. The result has been, that if we can sell all 12 places, members have got Certificates for a cost of about £75……. a less than half price bargain. The total cost of laying on the course in previous years has been about £900 (although at the moment I can’t be sure of costs for 2014)

At the moment, I’m just asking for expressions of interest, assuming the course would be over a weekend in October or November.

ANDREW