Rope rescue

[Tom Dunlap]

On a rope rescue discussion forum a question came up about using a live person for rescue training. This is a topic that we've talked about before. There is a good discussion at:

http://www.sarbc.org/cgi-bin/postit?login=sarbc&topic=rope&order=thread&article=4468

In the responses, this page is linked:

http://bstorage.com/speleo/Comprehensive/UsingTheTools.htm

 

[Raven]

Thanks for the links Tom.
Those guys seem to have a pretty good argument for using live patients in rescue, although mostly for the reason of learning firsthand the comfort level of a patient in a litter. This assumes that a first reponse has already been made and the patient is at least stable enough to be placed in a litter. Perhaps a good argument for big factory and maybe some caving applications, but not very practical for tree rescues. We don't use litters in the air, the high angle portion of our rescues is generally focused on getting the victim straight down ASAP and then proceed with 1st Aid procedures.
The one big problem with using a live victim is that they will generally assist with their own rescue-"let me hold that for ya, move my legs, shift my weight, etc.."- this decreases the effectiveness of the training. Perhaps if the instructor himself were the victim he would be able to keep himself from helping and be able to judge the effectiveness of his students technique. The risk could be reduced if the student was already proficient in rescuing the dummy before moving on to a more advanced scenario with instructor as victim.

 

[Jamin_Mayer]

When I worked for Wright Tree Service here in Boulder, CO we practiced live rescues frequently(well, monthly). We liked it a lot. We would pretend there was a sawed off hand injury one time or a neck injury another... We would communicate to the "victim" and ask questions while getting to them. I think it was fun because sometimes wee would get into tough scenarios and have to work them out. In addition, we tried to do the rescue in under 4 minutes.

To this day I am confident I can successfully rescue someone out of a tree in a safe and quick manner.