I am a First Aid Trainer
When I became a medical doctor, there was no way I would have thought I would be doing what I am doing now – teaching First Aid. Who would have thought I would end up being a first aid trainer?
I love medicine, I always have. I knew I was going to be a doctor when I was 9 years old and my plan on graduating was to be a Cardiologist when I graduated over 20 years ago… a story for another day.
With my medical degree and 2 masters degrees, I forged a career in Healthcare Administration. I was an Administrator at a Kidney Foundation when I had to resign in 2011.
Leaving the medical profession
I resigned for 2 reasons. The main one was my son’s health; he had developed a condition that made him prone to medical emergencies and I wanted to be around. The other reason was the extreme sadness I felt after a child, who had a kidney transplant and we were supporting, died. I was burnt out. I stepped away totally from medicine.
Due to my son’s condition, I had to teach his teachers, in each of his successive classes, what to do if he had a medical emergency. It became obvious that there was a need for first aid training in schools. In addition, I knew that parents and caregivers needed to be prepared IF a medical emergency occurred at home, my experience as a mum had shown me this. Preparation was key.
Becoming a First Aid Trainer by going back to medicine
I had to go back to medicine.
Unfortunately, I became ill. There were a lot of tests done, lots of hospital visits, consulting different doctors in order to make a diagnosis of my condition over a long time and finally, it was recommended I travel abroad. I didn’t.
It was during this period I worked on what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it as it related to giving people the information on how to act without fear or confusion to help anyone in a medical emergency. I also wanted to do a lot of other things related to that. Health information was always a big factor in how I practiced medicine during my clinical service years. I was that doctor that nurses would knock on my consulting room door because patients were still waiting and I was spending too much time with one. 🙂
Why Levande Healthcare?
“Levande” means “alive” or “living” in Swedish. All the different services under Levande Healthcare are aimed at providing the knowledge, skills and tools to help people #StayAlive – sale of first aid boxes & kits, first aid trainings and sale of evacuation equipment by TETCON and more that we hope to do.
I worked on setting up Levande while still ill and it was definitely my motivation for getting better! We opened for business in late 2016 and nearly 6 years on, there is still so much work to do especially on raising through awareness of Nigerians on emergency preparedness.
Circumstances (that I did not foresee in my wildest dreams!) have made it that I teach first aid now and all that it comes with and I am loving every minute. 🙂
