Saving lives at UWB. Students and teachers learned how to help others

An epileptic seizure, an injury with bleeding, or a heart attack were the crisis scenarios that nearly 50 participants in the Be Hero event had to face. The Center for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen organized a Giving Tuesday event.

At the beginning of December, the premises of the Faculty of Economics and the Bory Library were briefly transformed into a place where lives were at stake. An injured cleaner with a laceration on her head after a fall, a repairman with an epileptic seizure, or a teacher with a sudden heart attack – the scenarios for first aid training were deliberately taken from real life for the participants. "In cooperation with the non-profit organization Edukuj, we prepared three rescue missions in which live actors very realistically simulated crisis situations that any of us may encounter in everyday life," said Petra Taušl Procházková, head of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability.

Instructors from the Edukuj association supervised the exercise and evaluated the procedure immediately after the rescue mission, providing feedback. "Thank you for the opportunity to be exposed to model cases, which, thanks to the roles played by the organizers, were not far from reality. I was a little worried about how I would handle it all. However, with the start of the first mission, all my worries fell away, and then I just had to act," said Jiří Preis, a lecturer at FEK UWB, describing his experience of the event.

In addition to rescue missions, participants could also try their hand at first aid in a virtual reality environment, thanks to the Pilsen-based VR Rescue project. After completing a short 15-minute course, each participant received a certificate issued by the project's authors in cooperation with the Czech Red Cross.

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Sustainability organized the event as part of Giving Tuesday, a global day of generosity. "We join in every year, but each time with a slightly different deed and intention. Last year, for example, we managed a collection for the Hafanof dog shelter. Before that, we also organized recruitment for the bone marrow donor registry and cleaned up the surrounding area," explained Petra Taušl Procházková. As part of Giving Tuesday, more than 300 challenges and good deeds were registered throughout the Czech Republic this year.