ABU DHABI // Sid Bouziane was having dinner with his two sons when his seven-year-old, Elias, fell silent.
Mr Bouziane was able to recognise the signs of his son choking because he had recently attended first-aid training. He then used the Heimlich manoeuvre to expel the meatball lodged in his son’s trachea.
But he realised that had Elias been with his nanny she may not have known that he was choking or how to respond.
“I was just alone with them, and the worst thing is, if I was not here, if it was only the nanny, what would happen?” said Mr Bouziane, a French expatriate who works in health care.
Mr Bouziane said the incident led his family to enrol the nanny in a first-aid programme, in which she would learn skills such as paediatric cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR.
“I think it should be a mandatory part of recruitment of a nanny. She should pass the first-aid CPR,” said Mr Bouziane.
The number of nannies enrolled in the paediatric first-aid programme at UniTeam Medical Assistance, which provides training in Abu Dhabi and is accredited by the American Heart Association, is relatively low, said Caitlin Picker, managing director of the centre.
“[Parents] really should be thinking about the people looking after their kids,” she said.
More safety regulations have been put in place in recent years, but nannies fall outside workplace guidelines, Ms Picker said.
But standardising safety practices for caregivers is important, especially with the country’s diversity – which means people may have ways of treating injuries that sometimes are based on old wives’ tales, she said.
Being trained to know what to do in an emergency is critical, saving valuable time that could be spent trying to help the child until medical responders arrive.
The centre offered a course aimed at mums returning to work after pregnancy that trained the parents as well as their children’s nannies.
“I think it gave parents confidence,” she said.
People talk about the cost of training, but when the skills last two years – when it is recommended one takes a refresher course – the price comes down to pennies, said Lindsay Penfound, the centre’s general manager.
Parents and nannies should be aware of how to deal with emergency situations, especially for small children, with potential dangers in the home that range from choking to falls and ingestion of toxic substances like chemicals, said Dr Ahed Bisharat, consultant in general paediatrics at Burjeel Hospital.
“The parents and the nannies should know at least the basics of what to do,” Dr Bisharat said.
He said in 24 years of practising medicine and 14 years working in paediatrics, he had seen some cases in which parents knew how to react in emergencies, such as choking or loss of consciousness, but this was the exception rather than the rule.
“Many, many parents and nannies don’t know what to do,” he said.
They should know how to perform procedures such as CPR, because otherwise “they might lose their children very easily, because it is a matter of seconds” in an emergency situation, Dr Bisharat said.
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