Learning life-saving techniques
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Answer: When it’s a Ben Lomand repair truck.
No, it’s not as farfetched as it seems. The local telephone cooperative is in the process of providing CPR and first aid training to all its employees. In addition, instead of hiring outside instructors, the company is utilizing its own employees who are trained and certified to instruct other employees.
Ben Lomand CEO Levoy Knowles says the company’s reasons are simple.
“We’ve really tried to enhance our safety program over the last 12 months,” Knowles said. “Part of that is incorporating CPR and first aid training. And we have three of our own folks trained as trainers.”
Course instructor and former EMT Kelly McVey is one of the employees who had received this training and is now qualified to teach the courses.
“They sent three of us to school,” McVey said. “All three of us have been EMTs or paramedics in the past, and what we’ve done is we’ve gone to a refresher school to where we can teach medic first aid.”
According to McVey, the company plans to give the course to all its employees, around 150 locally, and the company has also given the course to its employees in other counties.
“Tracy City and White County have already had theirs done,” he said.
The classes consist of video-taped instruction, lecture, question and answer sessions, and actual hands-on reenactments of accident situations. During accident reenactments, those taking the course play the parts of accident victims and first aid providers, and react based on written descriptions of situations they might encounter on the job that involve various injuries – some life-threatening. The instructors then discuss their performance and, if necessary, how they might have improved it.
Since telephone repair trucks spend much of their time on the road, repairmen are more likely to encounter highway mishaps than most other professions, so those situations are addressed in the course as well. It makes the course valuable not only to company employees, but also to the general public.
Ben Lomand currently has three employees who are certified to teach the courses, including McVey, Tracy Denton, and Mike Birdwell, who taught the courses in Tracy City and White County.
According to McVey, the course isn’t a one-time training seminar. In the interest of ongoing safety training, Ben Lomand plans to give refresher courses every year.