Lifeguard Training

This portion of the MAHC deals directly with providing QUALIFIED LIFEGUARDS in an AQUATIC FACILITY to first, reduce the risk that could lead to injury and, secondly, appropriately respond to incidents when they happen. The duties of an AQUATIC FACILITY lifeguard have been compared to a number of other occupations including comparing the role of the police officer to that of a lifeguard at a swimming POOL.⁴⁴⁶ “The majority of the time, the task is very sedentary, sitting and watching. A quadriplegic could do it; until someone needs rescuing. Then the quadriplegic could not perform the required functions. It does not often happen to a lifeguard that someone needs rescuing, perhaps 0.1 percent of the time. But the ability to jump into the water and save the drowning victim is critical to the job. This is the reason why there has been someone sitting and watching for the other 99.9 percent of the time.” Bonneau and Brown’s⁴⁴⁷ position is that, because the disabled lifeguard is unable to perform the critical and essential part of the job, he is incapable of doing the job of lifeguard. Even if he can do 99.9% of the job, he should not be employed as a lifeguard. The perception of the public is that all lifeguards can perform all that is critical and essential to their job set. Unfortunately, this has sometimes been proven to be false. Many drowning deaths resulted from omissions of basic SAFETY precautions⁴⁴⁸,⁴⁴⁹,⁴⁵⁰,⁴⁵¹,⁴⁵²,⁴⁵³,⁴⁵⁴,⁴⁵⁵. These include absent or inadequate POOL fencing, unattended young children at water sites, faulty POOL design resulting in victims becoming trapped below the surface of the water, poor POOL maintenance resulting in murky or cloudy water that obscured sight of submerged bodies, lifeguards being distracted by socializing with others and doing other chores such as manning admission booths and doing housekeeping chores while on lifeguard duty, and poorly trained lifeguards who did not recognize a person in trouble in the water or had not been properly trained in rescue and resuscitation techniques. In some cases, these are correctable issues that could prevent drowning deaths. We anticipate that if POOL and water SAFETY STANDARDS are strictly enforced, and as lifeguards continue to become better trained and adhere to important basic principles of surveillance, rescue, and resuscitation, the death rate in public AQUATIC FACILITIES should decline. The goal of this section is to give POOL owners and operators BEST PRACTICE guidelines for guarded and unguarded POOLS as tools to make AQUATIC FACILITIES safer for the general public.