With classes and courses ending in mid June, for FE teachers, the last month of the academic year can be a bit of a training free-for-all, with a last gasp effort to add to the CPD credits.
Before I was a classroom teacher, I worked in student support, so there was no planning to be done in those last four student-free weeks and as a classic people pleaser (or “mug”, if you prefer) I could be drawn into any vacant unpaid position with just the promise of two days off site and a certificate. One of the responsibilities I took on was first-aider, because I assumed that an arts college is not a particularly risky environment and that I would rarely be called upon. How wrong I was.
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Odd injuries
No matter how many times you see it, a sewing machine needle that has been hydraulically pumped into a dainty little finger is not a pretty sight. Fashion students probably assume that the worst they can suffer in their industry is a barbed comment about trouser hems or spring florals, but a sharp sewing needle through a fingernail is slightly more painful. And there is little to be done, to be honest. Give an ice pack, because any attempt to come within a metre of the casualty is met with ear-splitting screeches, and send to A&E, where they have drugs and a big pair of surgical pliers.
Dancers are also frequent fliers in Kirsty’s sanatorium for the ungainly. Twisted ankles and muscle strains abound, and despite my begging, I am not allowed Deep Heat in the first aid kit so I end up trekking to the chemist and paying for it myself. Actors also end up with odd injuries - an allergic reaction to make-up, a pin left in a costume, being struck on the head by falling scenery and, on one occasion, a finger trapped in a prop skull.
When a first-aider is called to a music room, it’s usually one of three things: a guitar string snapping and breaking the skin, a chipped-cymbal laceration, or tripping on a microphone lead. Artists tend to accidentally cut themselves with craft knives or inhale paint fumes, and graphic designers get things caught in the screen printer, hopefully fingers. Media students get hit in the head by microphone boom poles and also fall into, on to, or off things while trying to get that Scorsese rip-off camera angle. Photographers can also fall prey to “interesting” angles, and the combination of a red light and chemical mixing in the darkrooms can have strange effects on the human brain.
Occasionally, there appears to be a real emergency. A student once came into the office saying they had taken an accidental overdose of paracetamol. My mind raced with counselling, suicide prevention training, poison control and the procedure for a massive overdose. “How many have you taken?” I asked.
“Three.”
I sent him home to his mother and spent the next hours trying to come down from an adrenaline spike of my own.
I suppose I should think myself lucky - at one of the first aid training refresher courses I was on, a woodwork teacher spoke of taking a finger packed in ice with him to A&E with an unfortunate student, only to be told that this was not the student’s finger. His finger was in another cubicle with a different student. On reflection, three quid for some Deep Heat is a bargain.
Kirsty Walker teaches at a college in the North West of England. She tweets @Kirstsclass
