"Be the Help - Until Help Arrives"

The original "Until Help Arrives" training course was created by Arlington, Virginia's  NOVA High Threat Response Committee. It was an incredible course that focused on building communities of citizen first responders who can intervene immediately following life-threatening traumatic incidents, helping to improve outcomes until professional first responders arrived and took over. 

The course helps improve outcomes because people at the scene of an incident are either problems or assets, and the knowledge from the class converts a liability into an asset. The course had whole sections dedicated to active shooters, preparedness, and psychology and how it affects people in high stress situations, with tons of real-life examples. All of that is in addition to tourniquets, wound packing, pressure points, airway management, and carries.

It still is  a fantastic curriculum, and our train-the-trainer course was two full days of instruction. You can attend a two to three hour version of Until Help Arrives for free if you live in or spend time in Arlington County, Virginia. 

The Red Cross has a online version of Until Help Arrives. So does FEMA, but it was on Ready.gov and seems to be all broken links anymore. We are post-DOGE, but that may just be a coincidence.

We highly encourage looking through all of the free material. It does not come close to preparing you to perform these skills hands-on in front of people and integrate it with everything else you need to do to keep yourself and your scene safe. Even a 3 hour live course does not do the original class justice. But it will prepare you for a live hands-on class where skills are incorporated into a complex scenario with professional actors.

Because the mental game is where it's at- to remember things in high stress situations, it needs to be muscle memory, and that takes repetitions under stress.

Our course is called "High Threat Trauma Response" as a nod toward those innovators in Northern Virginia, and because it's just a cool name that fits the material perfectly. And we'd be remiss to not mention Dr. Reed Smith by name as a world-shaking part of the original Until Help Arrives program. 

Stay safe, but be great,

kD