Players at this week’s Scottish Hydro Challenge hosted by Macdonald Hotels and Resorts partook in an emergency first aid course as the European Challenge Tour continues to raise the bar with its medical facilities, training and education.
Challenge Tour osteopath Poora Singh and Andrew Murray, the doctor for Europe’s second tier tour, hosted two hour-long training sessions on the Tuesday and Wednesday before this week’s tournament at Macdonald Spey Valley Golf Course.
There, the players received some basic guidance on CPR and resuscitation as well as learning how to use a defibrillator and receiving guidance on how to deal with a medical emergency.
It is something which, according to Singh, the players have been keen to develop this year, especially in the wake of the tragic events of this year’s Madeira Islands Open – Portugal – BPI.
“For the last three or four years we have increased the movement towards medicine and peak performance on the Challenge Tour,” said Singh, who also works as an osteopath for the Great Britain Olympics team and Birmingham City Football Club.
“We’re trying to get these guys prepared for the future and have them ready for professional sport. With Andrew Murray and myself on board now we have driven what you would call performance medicine.
“It’s all about training and nutrition and all of that. Alongside that we want an educational side to it and the players had expressed that they were looking to learn a bit more about life-saving and the crisis aspect of sport, so they were prepared in case a situation ever arose again like the one in Madeira.
“We thought it would be a good idea to put together a very basic training course which covers resuscitation and CPR so if somebody collapses and doesn’t show any response, the guys know how to perform CPR and how to use a defibrillator.
“You would have to do a full training day to get an official certificate but this was very general basics and just educating the players.
“It was really well-received by the 15 players that did it this week and some staff did it too. The aim now is to drive it forward and run a proper day course where they can get the full information on life-saving.
“It’s all about safety and making sure everyone is safe and comfortable. We are a big travelling group of people and we need to make sure we’re all safe and people have knowledge on these things.
“A lot of the guys would never really have thought about it before but sometimes it can take a serious situation like what happened recently to make you realise that you should know about this stuff.
“Andrew Murray is a trauma doctor so when we’re around it’s nice to do things like this and it will be good to know that these guys have some training.
“If we can have as many players as possible trained and competent in the field of life-saving then great. It would make everyone feel a bit more comfortable.”
