Introduction

Lifeguarding is a both a rewarding and stressful job. You will be dealing with high stakes situations and need to be able to react and make decisions without hesitation. Luckily for you the lifesaving society has estabilished a set of guidelines and principles for you to follow.

In recent years the lifesaving society has been moving away from a strictly rule base approach to a principle based approach. The rational is to allow to you deal with a more wide variety of first aid situations. The cons being that there is more gray area over what you should do.

The most important thing to remember is that you are not alone. When starting your first job, you will be supported. You don't need to know all the answers. Overtime you will develop a gut intuition regarding what you should do.

Prevention

The core tenent of lifeguarding is prevention. Your primary goal is to prevent most incidents from happening. This comes in the form of enforcing pool rules and also reconizing situations that could lead to an incident. Most experienced lifeguards can prevent most near drownings by regonizing weak swimmers and directing them accordingly.

Scanning

This is the majority of what you will be doing as a lifeguard. You are an active observer of the pool (remember prevention!). The lifesaving society establishes the 30 second rule. Your entire zone must be scanned within 30 seconds. This includes blind spots. Essentially if someone starts to drown or a medical emergency occurs it is your job to ensure it is spotted within 30 seconds.

This is typically achieved by a scanning and roaming pattern. Some pools establish a fixed roaming pattern. Others leave it up to the discretion of the guard. There are three scanning patterns, star burst, zig zag, and arc.

Scene, Primary, and Secondary Survey

Every incident you encounter as a lifeguard should begin with the scene survey, followed by the primary and seconary surveys. These surveys are critical for ensuring that you do not miss any steps. As you become more familiar with the survey, sometimes certain actions can be done simultaneously or the order modified as needed. For instance, if the person says they are having trouble breathing, you can pull some questions from your secondary survey to narrow it down (e.g., medical history, events prior).

The key term to remember is priority action approach. You deal with the most severe and life threatening issues first. Okay, let’s begin.

Remember 911 is Your Best Friend

Something a lot of new guards get caught up over is whether to call EMS.