Being Prepared When it Matters Most
Over the weekend I completed my Outdoor First Aid qualification in the Peak District. It was a demanding, intense, and deeply worthwhile couple of days, delivered brilliantly by Stu from Peak Mountaineering.
The course was unapologetically practical. We worked through a wide range of scenarios, from the everyday and manageable to the genuinely serious. That included treating minor cuts and bruises, managing broken limbs, responding to heat stroke, heart attacks, and severe wounds, and even dealing with poisoning from adder bites. We spent significant time looking at how to assess and support spinal, neck, and head injuries, and how to stabilise a casualty while waiting for professional help.
A key part of the training focused on what happens next: how to communicate clearly with emergency services and how to work effectively alongside Mountain Rescue teams when they arrive. We covered CPR in depth, the use of defibrillators, Epipen deployment, and a substantial section on paediatric first aid, which was particularly relevant to my work.
The setting mattered. Training outdoors, often cold, tired, and under time pressure, brings a realism that simply cannot be replicated in a classroom. It forces you to think clearly when conditions are not ideal and to prioritise calm, structured decision-making when someone is frightened, in pain, or deteriorating.
This qualification directly supports my pastoral role in a local primary school, where safeguarding, reassurance, and calm responses are essential. It also offers parents additional confidence that their child is in safe hands when working with me, whether in school, in tuition, or in outdoor contexts.
It also complements my ongoing Mountain Leader training, as I look to offer more outdoor and active opportunities for children and young people across Suffolk. If we want young people to benefit from the physical, emotional, and cognitive advantages of being outdoors, we have a responsibility to ensure that those experiences are well-planned, competently led, and safely supported.
More broadly, I strongly believe that first aid training should not be a one-off experience. It should be revisited throughout life and kept up to date. A society surrounded by trained first aiders is simply a safer one. First aid is not just a professional qualification, it is a life skill.
Many schools I have worked in already do excellent work in this area. For very young children, this might be as simple as knowing who to call in an emergency and how to describe what has happened using accurate vocabulary. For older and more independent children and young people, first aid knowledge can genuinely be life-saving for themselves, their friends, and their families. These are skills that extend far beyond the school gates.
In other news, I have begun taking on clients for GCSE English Literature and Language, as well as GCSE Maths at Foundation level. I will be sharing more about this over the coming weeks, but if you, or a young person you know, have received mock results and are looking at the difference between a grade 3 and a 4 or 5, please do get in touch. I offer personalised, targeted approaches that focus on finding those extra few marks that so often make the difference between just missing and securely achieving those essential grades.
Finally, I am currently reading A History of the World in 47 Borders by John Elledge. It is an absolutely compelling tour of world history through the lens of borders. What can seem like little more than lines on a map actually represents centuries, sometimes millennia, of social, political, and cultural history, forces that continue to shape the world today. It is one of those rare books that makes you see familiar things differently, and I genuinely cannot wait to open its pages each night before going to sleep.