St John Ambulance Society

Ugh the new uniform is such a hideous colour! It's bad enough not being allowed to wear my black and whites to sports duties and having to wear the old greens without getting that mess I like the nice black and whites (member 5 and a half years and counting, assistant duties coordinator. Don't like greens.)

Hello and welcome!

Do you intend to stay AFA once the level of AFA is updated and you have to do more such as provide treatment and support to people with spinal injuries?
What's county camp?

PS I swear I've seen you before somewhere no?

Have you actually got the new uniform?

Also do you know if we still get to wear high vis jackets?

Hmm your name also rings a bell ..

Hopefully yes I do hope to stay as AFA once it's updated, provided the training gets to our division! :L Our division is often the last to get updates/information and so on so who know?! :P

Have you seriously not every heard of/been on a county camp?
It's basically what it says on the tin .. all the divisions (including Cadets, Young Adults and Adults) in the county get together one week in August for a week camping. It's been ran in our county for YEARS, last year we conjoined with Bedfordshire county as they'd never had a county camp!

The Cadets complete proficiencies, take part in activities like kayaking, climbing and archery and compete in competions for prizes/trophies at the end of the week. The Young Adults (16-17year olds) are basically the same with a little bit more freedom and the Adults run the camp; make sure everyone gets fed, provide FA cover, supervise/take part in the activities alongside the cadets!

It's good fun & great for meeting people from the rest of the counties divisions!

Hi-Vis jackets will be down to of the Duty Officer/Coordinator. It depends on the risk assessment is what I hear. Personally I think we should keep them but like everything in SJA, that's another can of worms.

Fair enough you wanna stay AFA. I just don't have the time at the moment but I doubt you have much time either, what with your nursing course.

Oh I see, well we only recently started badgers in our division. We don't have cadets yet. I do know of a competition where all the cadet divisions battle it out against each other to be the best first aiders and people in my division have gone to be judges and marshals. But I've never heard of county camp.

So what has been your most memorable duty then so far?

that's seriously strange that you don't have or have even heard of a County Camp!

Most memorable duty would have to be a Downhill Karting Competion! Grown men build their own racing karts and race down a very steep hill with only hay bails to stop them to see who has the fastest kart!
Only one bloke managed to build a kart that literly fell to peices and crashed on the way down, leaving him unconcious and scraping his face along the road about half way down a bloody steep hill!
In come SJA to the rescue; running and getting lifts up the hill on quad bikes with the full kit including spinal boards in tow! Took a team of 5 of us to patch him up, he had broken 4 ribs, scraped half his face off and all he could think about was the kart!
The competition has never been run since as our divisonal leader complained to the local authorty saying it was too dangerous!

Happy Days!
& You?

Personally I love to wear the hi-vis jackets lol - makes me feel special.

Hey I see you wanna be a paramedic. That's a hard course to get onto good luck!

I do Health & Social Care at college atm and there are a lot of wannabe paramedics in my class. Also a lot of wannabe paramedics in my SJA division as you can imagine.

Interesting view on the Hi-Vis jacket...

I do indeed want to be a Paramedic and it is a hard course to get into.

Yeah I thought Nursing had a hard admission process - which it does compared to the majority of degrees - but Paramedics a lot more and higher grades.

I would say higher grades... Some do but the majority are looking at life experiences

Hi-Vis jackets will be down to of the Duty Officer/Coordinator. It depends on the risk assessment is what I hear. Personally I think we should keep them but like everything in SJA, that's another can of worms.

hi vis has been rather mis-used over the years , primarily because the shirts and jumpers didn't have the nice big and bold branding that greens tops and the SDU tops have.

there are some scenarios where H+S legislation and the risk assessments will continue to mandate some form of hi-vis - but there are limited circumstances in which the average first aider or AFA needs class 3 hi-vis compared to drivers , crew etc ...

we shall have to see what the take up of the new 'coat' is - as previous none high vis coat options didn't last due to poor sales but that was as a result of the issues i mentioned above.

Have you actually got the new uniform?

Also do you know if we still get to wear high vis jackets?

Thankfully not yet, but county've made us paint the skirting boards in our building the same colour and it looks truly terrible >.<
I don't know, there isn't a new high vis option but for those of us with mainly sports duties they're necessary so we'll just have to keep wearing the old ones.
Also, can you imagine trying to cover a big duty without them?

What county you in?

Also no I can't imagine not wearing high vis on big duties that'd be dumb.

I do mostly rugby duties so will still wear them a lot then

Cambs, hbu?
It would be very silly.
Same, you really wouldn't want to be on a rugby pitch without high vis. Well, I wouldn't anyway

My division is in the county of Surrey and too right.

Can you share with us your most memorable duty and why?

Probably last aprils rugby minifest (5-17 age) there was a nice variety of injuries and one kids dad made me rather cross. His little one had a suspected broken ankle and after spending over half an hour fetching his bike (and expecting this poor kid to be able to scramble on the back like usual) asked if we wanted them taking to hospital now