Below you will find an article from the padi newspaper “The Responder”. One of our certified Emergency First Responder students from Sea Bees at the J.W. Marriott Phuket was in the unfortunate situation of being present when a swimming accident occured. It was the luck of his stepfather that Jan reacted so quickly and had remember everything so well from his EFR course, which he absolved shortly before the incident, with the Sea Bees instructor Simon Hoeckstra.

First aid and Emergency Courses are really sensibel and necessary as you will read and we hope they will lead to more happy-end stories like this one:

Responders in Action

I was swimming in a lake with my then eight year old boy. We were starting the 320 metre/350 yard return journey from the dam to the western end of the reservoir when I saw my stepfather enter the water to swim. As we neared him I thought he was lying on his back, floating, but soon realised he was moving only in the slight eddy, and was face down in the water. I yelled for help, instructed my little boy to leave the water by the shortest route, and swam rapidly to my stepfather’s assistance. I rolled him onto his back, and used the recovery method to swim with him to the edge of the lake.

Thankfully there was a man passing with his wife, and a mobile telephone. He assisted me in extricating my stepfather from the water. On lying him on the ground I was unable to see any signs of self-sustained breathing, so set-to with CPR and mouth to mouth resuscitation. I forget how many cycles of CPR I needed to get the first signs of response, probably three or four. I was concerned whilst giving CPR of the sound of cracking, and thought I had broken/cracked his ribs. I then turned him onto his left side to aid in water egress from his mouth, as he recovered consciousness.

A telephone call had been placed during the “excitement” and soon after my stepfather started to come around, the Municipal Police arrived to take notes. It was some 15 minutes or more after that the ambulance arrived. My stepfather was able to speak to me by the time the professionals arrived, and asked what had happened. Being aware of his age (71) and the likely onset of shock, I refrained from telling him what occurred, other than there had been “a bit of a flap”.

He was evacuated to hospital where he spent several days undergoing tests for the cause of his accident. Absolutely nothing was found to be wrong with him, other than the scratches sustained in removing him from the water, up the rocks, and onto the road, which although appeared bad, were trivial. It seems as though a piece of grit cut open a 3 millimetre wound which then pretended to be enormous. Head wounds bleed so much!

Looking critically at my actions, I was hasty in starting CPR, as I don’t remember checking for signs of life. The deep, angry purple/blue colour of the my stepfather’s head was enough to spur me into my training immediately, however. All thanks to my instructor Simon Hoekstra (EFR Instructor – 969857), from Phuket, Thailand. My stepfather is alive, and as well as anybody of his age and health can expect to be.
Jan Kmiecik