Being in the giving professions is both a privilege and a burden. Being able to care for others in their most vulnerable moments can be incredibly rewarding, and you have the opportunity to make a genuine difference in your community as a whole. However, having such an impact on the lives of others, especially if you find yourself facing a medical emergency that you’re not very familiar with.
Everyone in the helping professions should have some basic personality traits and soft skills that help them work well with the public, such as respect, good communication, active listening skills, and emotional resilience. They also need something else that’s equally important: extensive training on all manner of emergencies and medical situations that they may face in their career.
One of these forms of training is BLS certification, which might be required by your employer in order to continue practicing. What is this training and how does one get it? Let’s explore a basic overview of this essential training, then examine some options for how to receive this training.
Basic Life Support Training: A Mandatory Skill
BLS stands for Basic Life Support. In short, this realm of training covers how to keep someone alive long enough to receive more intensive treatment in an emergency room, or to maintain them until other interventions are available, like defibrillators and ventilators.
Basic Life Support encompasses several key factors, which vary in complexity. The first component is traditional first aid, like being able to stop bleeding from a gunshot wound or giving cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, to someone whose heart has stopped. However, it goes a bit deeper than normal first aid training and into more intensive life-saving measures, such as using bag valve masks to deliver oxygen to someone who is in respiratory distress. In BLS training, you’ll receive an overview of how to identify medical emergencies and then how to intervene, as well as an explanation of what different injuries look like and what measures are necessary to help.
Who might need BLS Training?
You might believe that BLS training is only relevant for those who work in the healthcare industry, such as respiratory therapists, medical assistants, and nurses. However, many others in different professions should also receive this training, like teachers and social workers. Anyone who works in an environment with a high risk of injury should know how to stabilize a patient as emergency medical services arrive: this can include schools, nursing homes, dental practices, and daycare centers.
This training is especially relevant to an entirely different occupation than healthcare, which is fitness instructors and exercise coaches. Gyms can be very dangerous places if someone does not work out properly or pushes themselves too hard: someone may be seriously injured by using a workout machine incorrectly, or they might suffer a heart attack or stroke because they were not physically fit enough to attempt a certain routine. It’s essential that fitness coaches and personal trainers know how to provide basic life support should any of their clients ever find themselves in distress.
How do you receive BLS certification?
Many hospital systems provide BLS certifications to their staff or include it as part of their training process, but this isn’t always the case for those outside of healthcare, even though they also need to know these essential skills. For those who aren’t provided this training through their employer, there’s another option, which is online BLS certification.
This innovative new training method allows you to go at your own pace and on your own time, so you can truly absorb all the training and focus on this necessary material. In many traditional courses, you might only be in the classroom for a few hours and then expected to retain all that information; however, with online BLS certification, you can take as much time as you need to become familiar with the information before moving on to the next module, and you can revisit trainings as necessary until you’re confident in your skills.
Online BLS certification is incredibly affordable at under $65 per class, which provides you certification for up to two years. You’ll receive access to the entire course, which is approved by the American Heart Association, as well as a student manual to keep with you in case you ever need a refresher. This course also provides continuing education credits, which you might need to retain your license, depending on your profession.
Knowing how to save a life is important for everyone, but it’s especially relevant to those who work with the public every single day. Affordable and convenient online courses are the best way to ensure that should the need ever arise, you’re ready and willing to save a life.