More than 20 years ago, in 1995, the American Red Cross launched its landmark equipment-based Lifeguarding program. Years earlier, Ellis and Associates and the YMCA had begun training their swimming pool and waterpark lifeguards in equipment-based rescues, but the impact of this change what not really felt throughout the lifeguarding community until the American Red Cross unveiled its program. Suddenly, once the ARC committed to equipment-based rescues, lifeguards at swimming pools and waterparks everywhere could be seen with rescue tubes.
Most lifeguards today were hardly born when this transformation took place. Only one year earlier, Red-Cross–trained lifeguards had a completely different skill set: the cross-chest carry, the armpit tow, the underwater approach, the double-grip-on-one-wrist escape, etc. These skills are almost unknown to today’s swimming pool lifeguard who, with rescue tube in hand, use the active victim front and rear rescues, the submerged victim rescue, the deep-water lift with backboard. The lifeguarding world completely changed in 1995.
I was right in the middle of this change. Selected by the Red Cross as 1 of 10 National Faculty for this new program, I helped to train Instructor Trainers on the East Coast and throughout California in this new program.
But this change did not come easy. Many resisted, especially in my home state of California. At almost every training in California in 1995, someone would step-up and preach doom and gloom about using the rescue tube. In fact, a couple large Southern California organizations have even chosen to ignore equipment-based rescues to this day while still certifying their staff in American Red Cross Lifeguarding (how do they do that?). More than resisting this change, they predicted that lifeguards who use equipment would become weak and lose the ability to be effective. They were talking the demise of lifeguarding, where the rescue tube was not seen as a tool, but as a crutch.
Fast-forward to 2016. Taking a look around, I am happy to report that, over 20 years later, equipment-based lifeguarding is still going strong. The predictions of the nay-sayers about how lifeguards and lifeguarding would suffer because of the rescue tube have, thankfully, not come true. Instead of diminishing the capacity of lifeguards, equipment-based rescues have made lifeguarding safer and more effective.
Lifeguarding, first aid, and CPR skills will continue to evolve over the coming years as new generations attempt to make life-saving easier and more effective. While we should hold fast to what is working now while testing what is on the horizon, we must always do so with an open mind and a teachable heart. Otherwise, like those organizations mentioned before, we may miss the next important, life-changing innovation in our field and become something of relics because we refused to listen and adapt.
