Gallaghoul

Hey all! This is my first blog post so this sort of thing is probably old news to you. Last year, as a requirement of my electrician apprenticeship, I was compelled to get OSHA approved CPR and First Aid certified. Well, the easiest, quickest, and one of the cheapest options was to get certified online! www.icpri.com was recommended to me so I checked it out.

For about $20 and an hour of my time, I got CPR certified via a website. It even included AED training. Later, I did the First Aid training as well. Now, this concept seemed laughable to me before I did it. How could this be legitimate? What about practical training with dummies or other people? Well, I'll tell you this; I've been CPR certified three times through my life and after the online course I felt more confident in my ability to actually perform CPR in an emergency than at any other time!

Unlike a classroom style course, I can go back to the site and review the material, instruction, videos and retake the quiz at any time and as often as I need a refresher! If I'm about to go on a camping trip or other vacation, I can just hop on the site and brush up on the life saving procedures.

Before this most recent certification I had a wake up call. Last summer I was camping at a large paintball event here in Utah. In the tent immediately next to mine, two people suffered asphyxiation from misuse of propane tent heater, one of them a ten year-old girl. The scene that developed that morning was beyond tragic as nearly two hundred people watched a small group perform CPR for over an hour. While it was agonizingly clear to everyone that they were beyond earthly aid, the process of CPR had begun and could not stop until professional help arrived. In the quiet of those tense moments I asked myself if I would have been ready to act if those others, more confident and prepared than I, had not been there. I'm still not sure what the answer to that question was, but I realized in that moment that knowledge was the most important commodity.

Whether you do it online or in a classroom, I strongly suggest everyone prepare themselves to save a life.

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