Is this normal on a First Aid course *[Warning: graphic content, concerns child injuries and death]

[Justjoinedforthis]

I just attended a paediatric first aid course, and the video content has left me feeling really sick. Videos of drowned children being given unsuccessful CPR, a video of a woman being killed by falling masonry, a baby having heart failure with parent doing cor wrong...a lot of them seemed to be from a site called the YNC which I googled just now, and it seems to be some hardcore porn site which also has horrible graphic injuries.
The trainer seemed really nice but the videos (and there were many many more awful ones like this) seemed unnecessary and horrible.
Is this the norm? I don’t know whether to say something.

Sounds horrible

Not normal. Have done around 8 first aid courses over 21 years.
Have seen some fairly grim photos of injuries but always given warning and option to not look.
If the course was done under a governing board or national framework, then complain to them

I have images in my head of unsuccessful paediatric resuscitations, because it is part of my job to lead resuscitation attempts. Most people do not need those pictures in their head, and should not have them put there. I would have thought that the vast majority of people faced unnecessarily with those images would then have found it incredibly difficult to focus on the material they actually need to learn. It sounds very counterproductive. Please complain.

Evening all,

Thanks for all the reports. We're taking this one down so we can have a look behind the scenes.

Hi, we took this thread down last night just so we could check things out behind the scenes - as this was such a sensitive and distressing topic we felt it best to err on the side of caution.

We're reinstating it now, with a content warning, and have removed a number of troll hunting posts. We can understand why there were some reservations here, but just wanted to make it clear that the OP's been on the site (and has had this same username) for a number of years and we've no reason to think this thread isn't genuine.

OP, we agree with the advice given on this thread and hope you're able to raise your concerns with your managers.

Thanks for the replies, I have raised it with my manager. Apparently he has been coming to our nursery and doing it for years this way - if I hadn’t read all these replied I might have thought I was just being over sensitive, so glad to read them.

So what will happen now ?

I reckon he might be the sort of person who gets off on other people's discomfort.

I've just done my emergency first responder course and it's not graphic at all.

@SunshineCake I am waiting to hear back from my manager about the name of the company, then I have said I can raise it with them directly. The more I think about it, the madder it seems. And when I saw some people thought maybe this was a wind-up, I was definitely set in my view that this was totally inappropriate.

I think your Manager needs to speak to whoever commissions the company to do the training - likely to be the Local Authority's Early Years Team.
If the company think it is appropriate you are then stuck. Even if your Manager doesn't have them into your setting again, they are still going in to all the other settings.

It is likely that the commissioners haven't sat through all the course - they will have been given an outline "Our training covers.... X, Y Z" and then the company will have been bought in. They will likely be horrified.

@BackforGood good idea, thanks.

Well OP, I apologise, as I was a little disturbed initially with the fact you'd shared the name of the website, given the way you were describing it and I had reservations about this thread.
My posts were removed - probably for that reason. But my first post still stands, it is not "normal" to show 'laymen' real life-threatening footage, and it's good you've flagged this up and I hope it gets sorted out. Good luck.

@VenusTiger thank you, yes I shouldn’t have mentioned the name of the site!

I did my Paediatric First Aid course last week and it was nothing like that, nor was my previous course. This last one was all cartoon illustrations.

I went to one once where the guy showed a lot of clips from TV rescue documentaries (air ambulance, lifeguard type of things). It was all adult patients though, and I think all survived. Everyone at the course found this very informative. Clips of children would be extremely distressing and not appropriate.

This isn’t normal, I’ve done a lot of First Aid Courses through work.

However, when you mentioned the hardcore porn website I was reminded of a trainer on a 3 day first aid at work course via the local college who looking back now clearly had some very f**ed up views about women. I wish I’d reported him now but as I was the only woman on a course with about 6 burly fire fighters I didn’t as I was afraid of repercussions. He kept randomly bringing up periods and acting quite disgusted about them and said things like “these days I wouldn’t encourage a gentleman to attempt CPR on a lady and would ask the nearest female to do it. You’ve got to be careful gents. The nature of CPR on a female means you will be in contact with the breast area and giving the kiss of life. They open their eyes and the next thing you could be accused of all sorts. So try to avoid it. If it’s life and death and only you that can intervene then obviously you can’t let her die but make sure you get away from her breasts as soon as possible after she starts breathing again as you could be placed in a very vulnerable situation.”

He’d also bring up periods and then say “as well you will know, Sandgrown.” which made me feel very embarrassed as the only woman. And periods don’t really have anything to do with first aid!

Three days of that sort of nonsense. There are some weird people about.

Glad you’ve reported him. These videos sound very inappropriate.