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Define Water Safety Supervisors Carefully

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Supervision is an essential aspect of water safety. Parents and other guardians supervise their children, group leaders watch over their participants, and operators of swimming pools, beaches, and water parks hire lifeguards to scan swimming areas. All these types of supervision can be equally effective despite using different methods to ensure water safety.

Supervision by Parents/Guardians

Let’s start with parental supervision. Parents, guardians, babysitters only need to keep track of a few kids. Easy, right? Wrong! Children of all ages can quickly get in trouble. Small children often escape parental supervision and find themselves near the water unsupervised. Even when children are in the water under parental supervision, they can get into trouble with just one bad decision about diving, exploring deep water, etc. Here are some tips:

  1. Very young children need to be supervised at all times. They can reach the water and drown in the time it takes to answer the phone or flip a couple burgers.
  2. Use layers of protection to keep children safe. Contrary to what some swim schools might tell you, learning to swim at 3 months is not as important as constant adult supervision at the pool and in the home and barriers (e.g., fences, covers, locks, etc.) to water sources inside and outside the house. Other supplemental layers of protection include alarm systems, supervisor knowledge of water safety and CPR/first aid, and swimming lessons.
  3. When in the water with a young child, keep that child within arm’s reach at all times. Use a U.S. Coast Guard life jacket if necessary, but do not trust floaties, water wings, plastic rings, etc.
  4. For children old enough to read and understand rules, walk them around the pool and show them the posted rules and markers. Discuss why each rule is important. Be emphatic, not dramatic.
  5. When you are acting as a supervisor for your child, do not read, sun bathe, or visit with other adults. Keep eyes on your children at all times.
  6. Have children swim in a designated swimming area where lifeguards are on duty, but do not rely on lifeguards to watch your children. This is your responsibility.
  7. Watch for currents at beaches and rivers that can move children into dangerous water or out of your sight.
  8. Protect your children from the sun, the weather, and water contaminants.

Group Leader Supervision

Supervision by swimming instructors and coaches often goes unmentioned. The absurd conventional wisdom goes like this: “Since lifeguards cannot divide their attention between surveillance and a secondary task like teaching, it follows that instructors and coaches cannot teach and supervise their classes.” Right? Wrong!

The first responsibility of any instructor is to provide for the safety of all participants in their group. This is accomplished through supervision and otherwise accounting for participants in their class. The following tips apply to swimming instructors, WSIs, coaches, etc.:

  1. Obtain rescue and first aid/CPR training.
    1. If you swim well enough to get a lifeguarding certificate, do so. Some states consider a swimming instructor or coach with lifeguarding qualifications who supervises his/her group as providing lifeguard services.
    2. If you cannot swim well enough to be certified as a lifeguard, take a Red Cross Basic Water Rescue course, a Safety Training for Swim Coaches course, or equivalent with first aid and CPR.
  2. Dress appropriately for class. Be ready to enter the water or use equipment to make a rescue and to give care. Consider having oxygen, an automated external defibrillator (AED), a backboard, a first aid kit, reaching and throwing devices, a rescue tube, resuscitation mask, etc. accessible for your use. When in the water with your class, wear the rescue tube.
  3. Make sure the pool is free of hazards and ready to be used safely. If you cannot see the bottom, if broken glass is in the area, or if chemicals are out of balance, you cannot hold class in the water.
  4. Remove all pool covers from the pool before allowing participants in the water. Never hold class in a partly covered pool.
  5. Make sure your group is not too large to supervise. If it is, get help in the form of more staff or divide the group so that half the group is in the water and the other half is doing a land-based activity in the bleachers.
  6. Test all participants and decide where they can be in the facility. Remember that most skills can and should be taught in shallow water first.
  7. Position yourself so you can supervise the entire group. Even the strongest swimmers need your supervision.
  8. Teach corresponding water safety information with swimming and water-contact activities.
  9. Follow, don’t flout, the rules. They are appropriate for even the strongest swimmers.
  10. Take attendance before going in the water and again after class before leaving the pool area.
  11. Check the bottom of the pool before replacing pool covers or leaving the area at the end of class.
  12. Develop and practice an emergency action plan for your program.

Lifeguard Supervision

Lifeguards have specialized training to provide supervision of a swimming area. Since lifeguards provide surveillance of an entire area, they cannot focus attention on secondary tasks like swimming lessons, facility maintenance, cashier duties, etc. Tips for lifeguards include:

  1. Get proper training that includes lifeguarding, first aid/CPR, AED, and oxygen administration. Keep your training up-to-date and look for opportunities to take part in refreshers, staff training, etc.
  2. Have proper equipment on hand or accessible, including a rescue tube, a resuscitation mask, first aid equipment, backboard, etc.
  3. Come to work well rested, well hydrated, and mentally and physically ready to work.
  4. Position yourself where assigned or where you can keep constant surveillance of your entire area. Be mindful of blind spots, glare, and water conditions that affect your ability to see everything in your area.
  5. Program your mind with the victim characteristics, rule violation behaviors, hazardous conditions and practices, etc. so you will recognize them when you see them. Do not focus on scanning patterns or become distracted by the activities or people in the water. You have to see people and analyze activities, but do not become lost in the moment and forget to keep supervising.
  6. Scan appropriately and continuously. Perform visual sweeps of your assigned area, looking at the surface, middle, and bottom of the water, going from side to side, top to bottom, and point to point in your area.
  7. Inform, educate, and enforce safety rules in the area. Alert instructors of unsafe conditions or unsupervised participants.
  8. Activate the emergency action plan when your respond to an emergency and make a rescue in the most direct way. You have a duty to act appropriately in each situation.
  9. Take charge of emergency care until relieved by someone of equal or greater training.

All Supervision Is Good Supervision

Each of these supervisors uses different methods to get the job done. In some cases, the coverage of two or more supervisors may overlap and offer layers of protection. Remember all supervision is good supervision if it is adequately and continuously applied by the proper person.

Also remember that children can be taught swimming and water safety so that they can begin, as they grow older, to make good water safety decisions, thereby providing an extra layer of protection: a growing awareness of water hazards and self-reliance in the water.

 

Posted in Lifeguards and Lifesaving, Water Safety, Water Safety Instructor

Lifeguard Service in Instructional Settings

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Recently, I read some very tragic news items involving school pool drownings. To read what I read, click the following:

Stories such as these cause us to reflect on the best way to keep our children safe and still provide needed swimming/water safety instruction. Often, the rote answer given by aquatic professionals, risk managers, attorneys, and others is what seems to be missing—a lifeguard on duty. To quote the American Red Cross, an authoritative source, from page 7 of its current Water Safety Instructor’s Manual:

An adequate number of lifeguards should be on-duty and conducting patron surveillance during all in-water sessions.

Despite all of this, a stationed lifeguard is not always the best solution. As aquatic professionals, we need to understand this so we do not miss the point when we train others, advise pool operators and school districts, talk to the media, or look for answers in the face of tragic events.

Supervision: Not Just from the Lifeguard Chair

During instructional activities, the swimming instructor or coach, not the lifeguard, is the primary supervisor of the class. The stationed lifeguard, if present, is a secondary layer of protection—a second set of eyes watching the pool. (If you doubt this, try an experiment: The next time you are teaching a group in the water, tell the lifeguard you are leaving your class in the water for 5 minutes while you go to make a phone call. See what happens!)

In contrast, even if the lifeguard isn’t present, primary supervision of the class is still there because of the instructor. In addition to being primary, instructor supervision is also more direct, specific, and proximal to the class. This means instructors can combine supervision and class management to ensure participant safety. To that end, instructors must:

  • Be prepared to make a rescue and to perform CPR/first aid
  • Account for every participant at all times
  • Use principles of class organization to keep participants safe, including:
    • Taking a position that enables you to watch the entire class at all times
    • Structure activities to minimize anticipated risks
    • Introduce and enforce pool/class rules that eliminate risky behaviors
    • Apply class and individual limits based on age, ability, water depth, class size, etc.
  • Integrate water safety into all swimming instruction

If an instructor cannot adequately supervise and control the class at all times, the class should not be in the water until it can be divided or until additional instructors can assist.

RECOMMENDATION #1: Correct any issues with primary supervision in instructional settings before calling for a lifeguard in a chair or other secondary solutions.

Single Lifeguards: “Fish Out of Water”

In addition to being a secondary supervisor, lifeguards hired alone (i.e., outside of a properly managed swimming pool) may lack the necessary infrastructure and support system to be effective. They are a bit like “fish out of water” because of the following:

  • Lifeguards should be screened and hired on the basis of meeting minimum standards required for the facility. Associations, schools districts, university recreation centers, private parties are more likely to hire individuals simply because they can produce certifications.
  • Lifeguards require training, including an orientation to the job and in-service training. Single lifeguards hired by uninitiated pool operators are likely to depend on the lifeguard’s initial Lifeguarding course to give the lifeguard all the training required.
  • Lifeguard training at the facility usually includes “shadowing” with an experienced lifeguard so the newbie learns how the pool area is supervised for consistency and facility-specific issues. In a single lifeguard environment, there is nobody to shadow.
  • The single lifeguard probably has to work without specific written procedures defining his/her role and authority, primary responsibilities, emergency response, etc.
  • Without direct supervision by a head lifeguard/aquatic supervisor, it is easy for a lifeguard to become complacent and undisciplined. They may stop suiting up, sitting in a designated place, continually scanning the pool area, etc.

Of course, these potential problems exist for the instructors as well. However, instructors have more to do in the pool area and should already be motivated to provide safe, effective instruction. It is much easier to expand their preparation to include safety, supervision in an aquatic environment, etc. than it would be to provide all the infrastructure required to manage one or more stationed lifeguards.

RECOMMENDATION #2: When hiring a single lifeguard to supplement supervision in instructional settings, make sure RECOMMENDATION #1 is in place and necessary lifeguard infrastructure is implemented and maintained.

Lifeguard Services Redefined

The issues I have addressed here (and probably budgetary concerns, etc.) have causes  some states to redefine lifeguard services to include supervision by swimming instructors with proper qualifications. For example, in California, Section 116028 of the California Health and Safety Code has the following:

…”Lifeguard services” includes the supervision of the safety of participants in water-contact activities by lifeguards who are providing swimming lessons, coaching or overseeing water-contact sports, or providing water safety instructions to participants when no other persons are using the facilities unless those persons are supervised by separate lifeguard services.

Michigan, a state where one of the referenced drownings took place, has a similar law as explained in Michigan Public Pool Safety Guidelines for Schools 2007:

…Public Act 368, R 325.2198, clearly specifies when a lifeguard must be on duty and the qualifications of that lifeguard. A lifeguard must be on duty:

  1. At swimming pools other than spas or wading pools.
  2. At pools owned and operated by governments, public corporations, or a school.
  3. If a pool has a water surface greater than 2,400 square feet.
  4. If a pool has a diving board(s).
  5. Whenever the pool is open for use.

 

There must be at least 1 lifeguard for every 75 swimmers…’.

This document goes on to describe the swimming instructor/lifeguard option:

…If a supervising instructor, teacher, or coach does not meet the requirements of Rule R 325.2198, listed above, then a separate lifeguard who meets the requirements must be present.

Questions often arise about the requirements of schools to provide lifeguards. Frequently there is only one staff person on duty during class/practice. This may lead some to think that lifeguards need not be present, but usually the coach or physical education teacher is not only a qualified instructor, but also a certified lifeguard.

There must be a lifeguard on duty whenever the pool is open for use, which includes physical education class, practice, and when the pool is being used by staff or by any group, regardless of the level of swimming competency.

Can the swim instructor or coach also act as the lifeguard if he/she meets the qualifications listed above?

The answer is yes, but it is important to reiterate that if a swim instructor or coach is acting as both the instructor and lifeguard, he/she must always keep in mind that he/she is a lifeguard first and foremost.

Why Swim Instructor Lifeguard Service Makes Sense

Since swimming instructors have an inherent obligation to provide supervision, it makes sense that laws defining lifeguard service would recognize this fact, especially in situations where hiring a stationed lifeguard is impractical, irrelevant, and/or out of budget (such as within a school district).

Lifeguard services provided by swimming instructors and coaches are different than that provided by stationed lifeguards, but it can be as effective if not more so.

RECOMMENDATION #3: Recommend/require swimming instructors and coaches to have training in lifeguarding, first aid, and CPR. Make sure their protocols include readiness, adequate supervision, effective class organization, etc.

Posted in Lifeguards and Lifesaving, Water Safety Instructor