Lifeguards Allegedly Fail to Rescue Drowning Woman At Water Park

To improve safety, you must develop prevention strategies designed to prevent incidents, which includes the strategic positioning of qualified lifeguard personnel. Further, you need to provide site-specific continuous in-service training for the lifeguards in order to qualify them, rather than just certify them. Also, you need to be able to recognize the incident when it occurs as well as the possibility of it occurring. Lastly, you need to be able to safely and effective manage the incident. These things combined will make patrons safer while they are engaged in aquatic recreation activities, but you cannot guarantee their safety. We also advocate the need for the facility to conduct a Threat Assessment to determine the physical hazards that exist, to assess those activities that place patrons at heightened risk, and to determine the level of operational capability required of your personnel based on this threat assessment. You must then Plan for, Train for, and acquire the resources required to safely and effectively Manage incidents in and around the water and facility. Some victims do not display any signs of a struggle and simply submerge, especially if the victim is under the influence of drugs or alcohol. In order to intervene quickly during an emergency, the lifeguard is depends upon credible witnesses to report the problem and identify the last seen point. If there is any delay in doing so, the victim is destined to a poor outcome. Once the victim, however, has been located and removed from the water, it is critical that appropriate and effective Basic Life Support care be provided including positive pressure ventilation, using a bag-valve-mask resuscitator, oxygen administration, airway management, chest compression, and the use of an Automated External Defibrillator. However, if the victim has been submerged for a period exceeding 6 minutes, there is very little chance of being able to successfully resuscitate this patient.