Participants practice diagnosing and treating airway obstruction, bleeding, and shock by using simple triage and rapid treatment techniques. Covers evaluating patients by doing a head to toe assessment, establishing a medical treatment area, performing basic first aid, and practicing in a safe and sanitary manner. Participants learn about search and rescue planning, size-up, search techniques, rescue techniques, and most important, rescuer safety. Covers signs and symptoms that might be experienced by the disaster victim and worker. It addresses CERT organization and management principles and the need for documentation.
Participants review their answers from a take home examination.
Finally, they practice the skills that they have learned during the previous six sessions in disaster activity. By doing this for each session, participants are building a disaster response kit of items that they will need during a disaster. Trainers should offer periodic refresher sessions to reinforce the basic training. CERT teams can sponsor events such as drills, picnics, neighborhood clean up, and disaster education fairs which will keep them involved and trained. CERT members should receive recognition for completing their training.