The Pembina Valley Child Care Centre was recently gifted a LifeVac device that could help them one day save the life of one of the children in their care.
Dennis Morgan, who is a paramedic, rescue diver, and CPR instructor, recently stopped by the Morden daycare to train staff in the use of the choking relief device, which he donated to the facility.
“I’ve been with emergency services for 25 years, and I do a lot of donating of my time and training to a lot of day cares and things like that,” he said. “It’s just my way of putting back into the community.
“I’ve seen lots of good things, lots of bad things, so it’s just a way of donating my time back in the community and keeping people safe.”
Morgan stresses how this device could be a very important emergency tool for a day care to have on hand.
“They’re made basically like a plunger … instead of pushing the [trapped item] down, it sucks it up, so whatever’s caught in the throats definitely comes out. They do work good.
“Especially with little kids … they’re eating stuff and they shouldn’t be, picking stuff up,” he said, noting it works on adults as well. “This device comes with a child and an adult adapter for it. It’s easy to use, very simple—the training only takes maybe five minutes.”
Pembina Valley Child Care Centres representative Nancy Davison was appreciative of the donation of both the device and the training.
“It will just help us if we ever need to use it, help us save a baby from choking quickly and efficiently,” she said. “It’s kind of like, how he explained it, a reverse plunger. That’s how he explained them to us to use it, and then we all tried it on one of his dummies, and it kind of sucks it right out.
“We were thrilled to have it. We only have that one in the centre now, so everyone knows where it’s kept … if they need it, they’ll have enough time to go and grab it and bring it back to their room to use it,” Davison said. “You hope you never have to use it, but it’s nice that they provided this to us.”
