Refresher Weekend

In any medical profession, refreshers are manditory and Ski Patrol is no different. It's probably more important then EMT's or RN's because most of us use our skills for only a small part of the year. As for me it's been 8 months since I used any skills so I can tell you that I was ready for some practice.

Refresher Weekend was set up this year into four different sessions.

• Thursday night was a CPR refresher, this is manditory every year if you're a NSP member even though CPR is typically refreshed every 3 years. I think this isn't too bad an idea since, like I said, most of us only use our skills four months out of a year and it seems that it changes every year anyway.
• Friday was a new one this year, dedicated to refreshing the instructors, not on what they instruct, but on how they instruct. I had a lot of fun at this refresher, and I think that it's a great idea from NSP because there are some 'tricks and tips' that you tend to forget when you get in the rut of teaching. Everybody learns different and this class helps with that.  I want to note that this class was only manditory if you're a ski patrol instructor on our mountain or a registered NSP Instructor. So that means the rest of you get a day off :)
• Saturday was the medical refresher where we go over 1/3 of the Outdoor Emergency Care (OEC) curriculum, some of the bigger topics like shock are refreshed every year and other, less typical things such as pregnancy/birth are discussed every 3rd year. Another great thing about the refresher is that people from other mountains come due to various reasons so we get a lot of different imput.



self evac training Nov 2008

• Sunday consists of on-the hill training. I'm pretty sure this is how a lot of mountains do their refresher, we do it along with the medical refresher training because we have a lot of out-of-town patrollers and while cpr, instructor, and medical refreshers can be done anywhere, the on-the hill is on the hill for a reason. Each mountain has it's own specific needs so learning a chair evacuation at another mountain is fun, it doesn't really help you in refreshing how your mountain does a chair evac. This year we worked a lot on rope basics and our two main chair evac systems.

It sounds like a lot but it's one weekend out of the 8 months we're not working and for me and others, it's really just a way to get back in touch with friends we haven't seen. Ski Patrol is unlike any other job I've had, this will probably be true for anybody you ask (unless you ask a Firefighter) because we're spending all day together. We really become a family and we're always looking for like-minded individuals to join us.

Back together again