First Aid Requirements for Watersports Staff

Every RYA instructor must hold a current first aid certificate to teach, and every centre must be able to give first aid to anyone on its site. Those two facts are well known. What is less well understood is what kind of first aid matters most in a watersports setting, how to go beyond the minimum, and how to make sure that when someone collapses on the pontoon the response is quick, calm and correct. This article covers the requirements and the readiness.

The qualification requirement

For an RYA instructor qualification to be valid, the holder needs a first aid certificate acceptable to the RYA. The RYA First Aid course is designed for the marine environment and is the most common choice, and the RYA also accepts a range of other courses of at least a day's duration that meet its criteria, including some workplace first aid courses. Certificates are valid for a fixed period, usually three years, and an instructor whose first aid has lapsed cannot teach until it is renewed. Check the current RYA list of accepted qualifications when planning, because it changes.

Your centre's own needs may go further. Health and safety law requires employers to assess their first aid needs and provide appropriate equipment, facilities and personnel. A remote site, a large number of children, or a programme including powerboating and residentials all point towards more trained people and more equipment than the minimum.

What watersports first aid actually involves

The incidents that happen at centres are different from those in an office. Cold water immersion and hypothermia, drowning and near drowning, head injuries from booms, cuts from fittings and shells, dislocations and fractures from falls on slipways and trolleys, burns from engines and sun, allergic reactions, asthma made worse by cold and effort, and the ordinary medical emergencies that happen anywhere: cardiac arrest, seizures, diabetic episodes. Instructors need to be able to assess a casualty in or beside the water, manage an airway in a wet, cold person, perform CPR on a pontoon or in a RIB, treat hypothermia correctly, recognise secondary drowning and know when to send someone to hospital.

Choose a course that teaches these things rather than one that treats a sailing centre like a warehouse. The RYA First Aid syllabus does; many generic courses do not.

Plan your first aid cover

Write a first aid needs assessment, even a short one. Consider how many people are on site at peak, how many are children, how far you are from an ambulance and a hospital, how long it would take to bring a casualty from the far side of your water, what activities you run and what injuries they produce. Decide how many first aiders you need on duty at any time and where. Many centres settle on at least one qualified first aider on the shore, with every instructor on the water also qualified, so that treatment can start wherever the casualty is.

Put the first aid cover on the roster like any other role. The person in charge on the day should know who the first aiders are and where they are.

Kits and equipment

Kits should be matched to the setting. A main kit in the office or clubhouse, stocked for serious injury and the number of people on site; a waterproof kit in every safety boat with the items needed afloat; small kits for shore-based activities away from the base. Consider a defibrillator; they have saved lives at sailing clubs, they are increasingly affordable and often available through local grants, and staff can be trained in minutes. Add foil blankets and warm dry layers for hypothermia, a means of warming a casualty, a stretcher or a plan for moving an injured person from the pontoon, and a way of recording treatment.

Check and restock kits on a schedule and record the check. A kit missing the items used last week is not a kit.

Calling for help

Your emergency action plan should set out exactly how to summon help from each part of your site and water: which number, which service, what the location is in the form the service will ask for, including what3words or grid references for remote spots, how to guide an ambulance to the water, and who meets it. Practise it. The moment of a real emergency is not the time to discover that the office phone does not reach the coastguard or that the gate is locked.

Training beyond the certificate

A three-year certificate does not keep skills sharp. Run a short refresher at the start of each season: CPR practice on a manikin, the hypothermia protocol, the defibrillator, moving a casualty, and a scenario or two on your own pontoon. Discuss the incidents of the previous season and what the first aid response taught you. New staff should walk through the plan and the kit locations in their first week.

Recording and reporting

Every treatment, however small, goes in the accident book or your incident system: what happened, what was done, by whom, and what advice was given. Keep the records securely because they contain health data, and retain them for the period a claim could be brought. Serious injuries may need reporting externally under RIDDOR in the UK or to the Health and Safety Authority in Ireland, and to the RYA and your insurer. Put the thresholds in your emergency plan.

Medical information about learners

You cannot treat safely what you do not know about. Collect relevant medical information at booking, with consent, and make sure the instructor responsible for each learner has seen it before the session. Have a clear and discreet way of handling medication such as inhalers and adrenaline auto-injectors: where they are kept, who knows, how they get to the water. Brief instructors on the specific needs of the learners in their group each day.

Looking after the first aider

Dealing with a serious casualty is distressing. Check on the staff involved afterwards, offer time and support, and do not expect them to go straight back to teaching as if nothing had happened. A debrief in the following days helps people process it and improves the plan.

The readiness test

Walk your site with a colleague and pose a scenario: an adult collapses here, a child is pulled from the water there, a teenager has a serious cut on the far bank. At each point ask: who responds, with what kit, how is help called, where does the ambulance come to, who looks after the rest of the group, who records it? If the answers come quickly and match your written plan, you are ready. If not, you have found the gap while it is still cheap to close.

This article is general guidance for RYA centres and clubs. Schemes, awards and requirements change — always check the latest official RYA guidance and your recognition paperwork before acting. ActivityRoster helps you run the rostering, qualifications and safety-cover side of all of this in one place.