On February 7th, the IFMGA, the Mountain Safety Information Platform and the British Mountain Guides Association, organized the first worldwide teaching webinar called “State of the Art in Companion Rescue and First Aid for Avalanche Patients: A comprehensive overview of the current search, excavation and first aid strategies in avalanche rescue.”
The content covered everything from group check and simple single burial searches to multiple burial searches based on the marking feature, the concept of the mental map and how to properly recognize when it is necessary to apply an alternative search strategy. Concerning excavation, a 2020 version of the Snow Conveyor Belt in its elementary version for the guests as well as the more advanced techniques for the guides was reviewed. As recent research shows, effective first aid starting immediately when head and chest are freed is crucial for the survival chances of the avalanche patient. Based on the AvaLife protocol, you will learn a systematic approach on how to provide "Greatest Good for the Greatest Number" - in the most crucial phase just after the accident, where YOU need to make the best out of the resources you have available within your group before organized rescue will arrive.
The webinar had a total of 242 participants and pannelists and there was participation from 24 nations:
MSi workgroup members Stefan Buis, Einar Løken and Angela Hawse assisted with the management of the Q&A section in particular and the webinar in general.
We share with you some of the feedback from the webinar from a screenshot of WhatsApp feedback of a group of mountain guides from New Zealand (1 registered users, several guides watching, so in total even more guides being part of it).
“My feedback/summary to the IFMGA president and IFMGA board of directors:
I think this teaching and communication format is an interesting track to pursue for IFMGA. This approach ensures that “international best practice” is passed to your 7000+ Mountain Guides directly, thus it will lead to an important synchronization between all the guides and the national instructors.
Having taught in 30 countries myself, it is part of the reality that not all national level instructor teams have the same level of access and eager to keep current on international best practice. This leads to unnecessary differences in the quality of the initial training and CPD content delivered to the guides.
The teaching format of last night offers to IFMGA a cost-effective and efficient option to overcome such issues - and as such to life up to the high quality goals you have set for your profession. “
If you are member of the IFMGA, you can find the complete video of the webinar in the link below
http://bit.ly/IFMGA-MSi-Webinar
We will continue to send learning opportunities like this one through our mailing.
For feedback, you can reach out to us through our social media.
Office IVBV/UIAGM/IFMGA
Christoph Schaub
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CH-1920 Martigny
Switzerland
+41 79 279 66 24
office@uiagm.info
