Not On My Watch: Preparing Your Guards to Identify Medical Events

As we continue to protect non-swimmers in our pools this summer, it is equally as important to prepare your guards to identify and respond to an aquatic medical event.

Now that most pools are open at full capacity this summer, your pools will have more swimmers, swimmers who may be unconditioned for their usual activity and guards who will need frequent refreshers after being away from the pool deck for a long period of time.

We've already investigated a number of medical events this year, and we'd like to highlight what we've been seeing, so that you can prepare your guards to identify and quickly respond to these events:

Noticeable change in behavior. Many medical event victims tend to be frequent pool users that the lifeguards see often. When the lifeguard on duty describes what happened after a medical event, it is common for them to say, "I noticed their behavior was different than usual."
Appears to be taking a break. We also hear often that the victim appears to be slowing down, or stopping to sit on the stairs for an extended period of time. This is important for guards to understand, as many of us think anyone experiencing a medical event would be clutching their chest, shaking or convulsing.
"Dead man's float." This is one of the most difficult signs for guards to identify because many children and even adults will do the "dead man's float" to relax, or just for fun. It is critical for aquatic directors to be clear that the "dead man's float" (floating face down) is not allowed in the pool at any time.

We encourage you to share these insights with your aquatics staff, so they know what to look for. You can also download our full resource that provides different ways to prepare your aquatic staff to identify these events and respond quickly.

Download Our Full Resource

In-Service Topic of the Week

Empowering Lifeguards to Intervene if a Medical Event is Suspected
We have created a scenario for you to use with your teams that will allow you to practice identifying and intervening if a medical even is suspected.

If you’d like your teams to sign-up for our aquatics safety content, including our summer series: Not On My Watch, please forward them this email and encourage them to sign-up for our emails.

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