Pupils’ first aid lessons

Awardnomination

Pupils at All Saints and Rochsolloch primaries in Airdrie have been learning life- saving skills thanks to an award-nominated first aid programme.

Youngsters learned CPR – practising on teddies and soft toys for Primary One to Three children, and dummies for older pupils – from NHS Lanarkshire nurses Caroline Casey, Laura Gillies, Michelle Graham, Fiona Macpherson and Fiona Torrance.

The team, who work at Wishaw General, give their own time to teach the classes, which began in April and have reached 1700 children; with visits arranged to Monklands primaries Clarkston and Townhead.

Now they are shortlisted in the community champion category at this month’s Scottish first aid awards.

Caroline said: “We had all talked for a while about the idea of spending some of our free time teaching CPR to primary children, and the organisation Save a Life for Scotland helped us to set up and gave us training videos suitable for children.

“The kids love it when we go into the schools and we make it exciting for them – it’s not at all scary.

“Little ones probably won’t have the strength to do CPR for real but are learning the skill for when they get older, and we teach them things they can do in emergency situations, such as shouting for help or calling 999.

“Many of the older pupils would hopefully be able to carry out chest compressions effectively.

“We get a lot of satisfaction from volunteering to do this, and we now hope to do the training in as many Lanarkshire primary schools as possible.”