Another Week, Another Course

               I have written before about the various first aid courses that I have been sent on over the years. My certificate needs to be renewed every three years, but it feels like I end up doing a course much more than that. This is because the expectations of what we should do in an emergency keep changing. We don’t practise mouth to mouth anymore due to the infection risk. We now only give the patient (or their family) the bandages rather than apply them ourselves. Pretty much the only thing that we are still required to do is call an ambulance, something that I don’t need a daylong training session to learn.

               However, the most recent first aid course was different as it was for mental health, rather than putting arms in slings or performing CPR to the rhythm of Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. The venue was at the head office. I managed to persuade them to let me stay in a nearby hotel the night before (with dinner and breakfast). I thought I might as well get this to work in my advantage, particularly as nobody told me I was signed up to the course and it was in the middle of my holiday.

               The training venue was essentially a large foyer between a call centre, the toilets and the coffee making facilities. This meant there was a constant stream of people trying to discretely pass by eating sandwiches while the instructor discussed the major causes of suicide.

               Of all the things that I hate the most about these corporate training courses, dividing into groups, writing on flipcharts and then telling the group what we wrote is my least favourite. Nobody ever wants to write; nobody ever wants to present and the whole thing is pointless as the rest of the group can just read what was on the flipchart anyway. This course spent the entire morning doing this. One particularly odd exercise included drawing the various symptoms of depression using stick figures. We all just stared at each other blankly. That was until somebody from the call centre tripped over a chair leg and dropped their coffee on the floor.

               Then it was lunchtime. This was provided by a local bakery and way too much food was brought into the training room by a stressed looking woman in a Fiat Punto. Nothing was labelled so we all had to guess. The sausage rolls were a hit, the egg sandwiches weren’t. A particular mystery was an ice cream container filled with miscellaneous crisps. There were at least two (possibly three) types of loose crisps all just mixed together. Obviously, food labelling rules don’t apply here, which is odd because I have done a course on that topic in the same room only a few months ago.

               The afternoon was taken up with case studies. Long videos of people talking about their experiences in more detail than was necessary. The woman next to me fell asleep. Once all that was done, the instructor announced that we were running behind, so we had to cover eating disorders, bipolar, self-harm and psychosis all in about half an hour. The woman next to me woke up. Then we had to do a test. Fortunately, it was multiple choice and so easy that it felt like they were written by the same people that do the competitions on Lorraine or Loose Women. During the test there was an interruption as somebody from the call centre wanted to know if they could have the leftover sandwiches. We all passed (even the woman who had been asleep).

               I have just found out that we have another course next month, learning insights. I think I will book a medical appointment that day, no idea about what issue but I have a couple of weeks to decide. Wish me luck.