Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The Problem With Lifeguards

Martina Chione
English 101
7/10/2013
            Did you know that drowning is the number one cause of death in the world? That explains all the water, and it also explains all the lifeguards who do not do their jobs right.
The world of lifeguards is an unknown topic to society. If I walked up to a random person on the street and asked them what they thought about gay marriage, they would probably have an answer. If I asked them what they thought should be done about the problem with lifeguards, they would most likely be confused. Anything about lifeguards is rarely brought up on the news, or seen in a newspaper, until someone drowns. And then when the news reporter delivers the story to the public, they make the lifeguards and the companies look like they did everything they could. A better lifeguard knows that the drowning could have been prevented. Everyone should know that.
            While doing some research for a paper I wrote a few months ago, I found many stories about drownings that were under the care of lifeguards. They made the lifeguard company look innocent. The lifeguards did exactly what they were trained to do by the company. That makes it the fault of the company, not the individual lifeguards.
Drowning can be and usually is quick and silent. It is the fifth highest cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. From 2005 to 2009, 3,533 people died from drowning in non-boat related incidents. Children from the age of 1 to 4 drowned the most. Many of these incidents happened under the care of lifeguards.
There are five stages of drowning: Surprise! In this stage, a person begins to struggle at the surface but is still able to get air in their lungs. It usually lasts for around thirty seconds. Involuntary Breath Holding: after the person has tired, they cannot get up for air, thus being forced to hold their breath. Unconsciousness: this stage is exactly what it says. The person’s lungs begin to fill with water. Hypoxic Convulsion: the person has already taken in water and is unconscious. Puss begins to ooze out of their eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Their body becomes rigid and their may be jerking motions. Death: when they have reached this stage, the person is clinically dead which means that they can still be brought back, but from the moment their heart stops beating, their chance of survival drops by ten percent every minute. These stages of drowning can occur all within sixty seconds. The person needs aid rendered before they pass the first stage.
If death is not the result of a serious near drowning, then there are other extreme results such as physical inability or permanent brain damage. Most parents do not know how to render aid to a child after they have stopped breathing. Some parents may not be able to get their child off of the bottom of as little as four feet of water.
“If you go to any other lifeguard company and ask them for a cup of water, they will bring you exactly what you asked for. If you ask a Jeff Ellis lifeguard for a cup of water, they will bring you a cup of water with ice, a lemon slice on the side, a napkin, and a little umbrella on top. When you tell them you didn’t need all that, they will tell you its no problem, they do it every time.”
When people go to a pool for a swim, they expect the lifeguard to sit there in the chair and look at the water. What a lifeguard needs to deliver to a guest is the quote about the cup of water.
            One reason that lifeguards may be so overlooked is the fact that lifeguarding has been so abused in the past hundred or so years. Strategies were never developed to ensure that a lifeguard was able to protect people at the highest level possible.
A lifeguard’s task as a first responder is to ensure the safety of the guests at a pool or beach, but unfortunately not just any lifeguard company does that. Before I became a lifeguard myself, I used to think the same as most other people; a person with a rescue tube is sitting in a chair, I am safe. My mind never thought to strive beyond that thought. But when my friend got me involved with the company Jeff Ellis Management, I finally woke up to the problems that are always being hushed. I realized the problem with drownings around not just the US, but the entire world.
A few months ago I found many stories on the internet about drownings that were under the care of lifeguards. In the stories, the lifeguards did exactly what they were trained and taught to do. In the end, the people drowned anyway. While reading these stories, I realized that the drownings could have very well been prevented if the lifeguards had been trained better and their supervisors were stricter with them. If the lifeguard company had had good work standards that were used with every lifeguard, those people could have been saved before they even passed the first stage of drowning. I was able to see the holes and flaws in these stories because of my knowledge of lifeguards. If every person in the world saw how a lifeguard really should be, they would be able to see the problems with these situations as well.
What was really sad about the stories is that not even the parents of the dead children knew what the real issue was. They blamed themselves and did not realize that their child should have been saved even if they were not watching them. The close family and friends of drowned people in these situations can be the strongest voices in the fight for better lifeguards.
While doing some research on this paper, I Googled drowning to see what I would get. I found many websites that described drowning, its causes, and ways it can be avoided. But not in any of them did I see anything about lifeguards as a way to avoid a drowning, much less anything about lifeguards who actually do their jobs. The world of lifeguards and its problems needs to be openly public. Everyone knows about cancer. With drownings being the fifth largest cause of death in the US, the problems with lifeguards needs to be just as important.
A person can go to college to become an accountant, graduate, and get a job, and they are an accountant. Just as well, a lifeguard can take the training, get a job, and be a lifeguard. This is not true. There are many lifeguard trainings out there who call themselves professional, but when it comes down to it, they are inaccurate, sometimes behind, and are not strict enough such as passing students who still cannot get something right. A lifeguard may have papers that say they have completed training, but that does not mean they are going to do their job right.
The problem with many lifeguard companies is this; if they do not have set specific and strictly enforced rules for the guards that are used at every body of water guarded by that company then each personal lifeguard will have their own level of leeway with themselves and other guards. This attitude rubs off on new guards as they join the company, and as the current guards work longer and move up in position, they also develop in their heads what they think should be expected from the lifeguards. Unfortunately, if a lifeguard was trained and disciplined wrong from the very beginning, they will most likely do the same to the new guards who come after them, thus loosing almost all manner of professionalism, awareness, and self control. Lifeguarding is a very important job and needs to be taken seriously by every company with utmost care.
I have had several experiences with lifeguards who did not do their job correctly. One of them was when I was six years old. I remember it clearly. I was at a pool in Oregon with my family and grandparents when I decided to sneak off by myself. I was wearing a lifejacket and decided to jump in over my head. As soon as I hit the water, I began to panic. Even though I now know I was not drowning, I thought I was at the time. I flailed my way screaming back to the edge of the pool. I remember the lifeguard yelling at me to stop screaming. When I did find my way out of the water, the lifeguard made me sit on the stand until my mom came out of the locker rooms.
Ten years later when I had my first rescue as a new lifeguard, the little boy was in a lifejacket. He came out of the slide and began to panic. He got stuck in the middle of the pool. I knew that I had to get that kid out immediately. Panic can still turn to something bad.
Why did that lifeguard in my situation not get me out, but yell at me and then sit me out of the pool? Whether someone was keeping a close eye on me or not, the lifeguard still could have gotten me. I understand that lifeguards are not glorified babysitters and that parents should watch their kids, but that is no excuse for a drowning or panicking child.
Many things can be done to take care of this problem around the world with lifeguards. In fact, there are already many things going on to help improve and ensure the safety of guests at a pool or beach, but it will never be enough until every swimming place has good and well trained lifeguards.
In Jeff Ellis Management, founded 2004, passing the training is no easy task. If someone thinks they can walk in there and wing the job, they can turn around and leave. While on the job, we are randomly tested with manikins and people fake drowning. We have ten seconds to see them and twenty seconds to render aid. This is possible because of our ten second scanning patterns that we use, always moving our heads and checking, and scanning with our arms every five minutes. We practice our lifeguard skills such as rescue types, CPR, first aid, and even guest services skills for up to four hours every month. At random, we are audited while on the job.
Ellis and Associates, another company owned by the same person as Jeff Ellis Management, was founded in 1983. This company does hundreds of thousands of pools and beaches all around the world. They are ranked one of the best lifeguard companies in the world.
Lifeguard awareness is being spread throughout the globe, but it still remains an unpopular topic among society. What needs to happen is for people to be as aware of drownings as much as well trained lifeguards are. The word needs to be put out to the public to see the lifeguards when they go swimming, to be aware of what risk they may be putting themselves at by getting in the water, and most of all, be able to correctly judge the lifeguards, not only for themselves, but for their friends and loved ones.
What should be looked for in a lifeguard:
--Scanning; visibly moving their heads along every part of their zone, especially the walls and corners
--Proper rescue equipment; rescue tube with strap on and ready, hip pack, a trauma bag with major emergency equipment, and a backboard for pulling people safely out of the water. This equipment should be found somewhere near the water.
--No cell phones or other distractions near by
--No fiddling around or goofing off; feet ready to jump in at any moment
--Not talking to anyone for more than a minute
--They deliver good, solid, and unsterstandable answers to any questions
--Drinking water is at hand
If someone would like to go further, ask management any questions:
            --Do you test your lifeguards?
            --How often do your lifeguards change stands?
            --How often are the lifeguards required to renew their licenses?
            --What company are your guards trained by?
            --Are your guards audited?
            --How often do they practice their guarding skills such as rescuing methods and
CPR?
            One may say that it costs a lot of money to hire a well trained and disciplined company that is also more expensive. According to the NCI (National Cancer Institute), $5 to 6 billion is being spent on cancer research per year. I have nothing against cancer research and am in all favor of money being invested in it, but why can not money like that be raised and invested in places to hire better lifeguards, or spent on lifeguard companies to be able to charge less for contracts?
            One may argue that you get what you pay for, and this is true to take into consideration with almost anything else. But with lives at stake, there is no excuse. One company may cost more than another, but one company may keep a lot more people safe than the other.
The job also pays in many other ways. I personally make nine dollars an hour which is seventy five cents higher than the minimum wage in Illinois. The amount of work that my coworkers and I put into the job, we could be fairly paid a good fifteen dollars an hour. But the responsibility and immense amount of experience that comes with the job is worth much more.
One thing that can be stronger than money is the power in the voices of a crowd. The more people who come out and protest against poor lifeguarding, the better. Towns and pools will do everything they can to hire better lifeguards if enough voices are heard.
The reality of a lifeguard’s true duties needs to be known to everyone. If a lifeguard is on duty, there is very little excuse for a drowning. They are there to protect the lives of the people in the water. The fight for better lifeguards should never end until the yearly number of drownings is reduced greatly.

No comments:

Post a Comment