Instructor profile: Mark Thompson

Get tips and advice from the experts and find out how they started working in the industry in our instructor profile series.

After working in-house as a health and safety trainer, Mark Thompson from Blackburn in Lancashire decided to go it alone and set up his own first aid training business.

Q. Why did you choose a career in first aid training?
A. My background was health and safety and the company I used to work for wanted an instructor in house to keep costs down. So I took on one syllabus and then progressed to the other ones. People said to me, ‘Why don’t you do this for yourself?’ It’s having the courage to go out there and do something about it. So I left that company to set up on my own and I discovered the hours are longer but my stress levels were far better than when I was working for someone else.

Q. Why did you choose WorkSafe?
A. When I started looking at costings and training providers, WorkSafe came out as one of the better ones. The costs, the way they get the training across and the support was all great. It was easy to get in touch with the company and say ‘Help, I’ve got a problem’ and someone always gets a reply to you quickly.

Q. What work does your training company do?
A. We do pretty much everything that is connected to health and safety – so it could be manual handling, forklifts, you name it. There are multiple different syllabuses.

Q. Any funny moments from teaching first aid?
A. I was teaching first aid to some people from Liverpool and the accents were slightly different from my Lancashire one and we were talking about using femoral indirect pressure to stop bleeding. I was explaining that you had to put your fist into the patient’s groin and one of the students misunderstood me and thought I had said put your face into the patient’s groin! I told them that was a different type of lesson!

Q. Any life saving experiences of your own?
A. I used to be in the mountain rescue so I’ve dealt with lots of broken arms and things and rescuing people from the mountain side. It was from there I decided to take it to the next level and become an instructor.

Q. Do you have any tips to pass on to other trainers?
A. Just be yourself – don’t try to be someone you’re not. A lot of instructors try to put a false image across to the candidates and it shows. If you’ve got the confidence and you know your job then people will accept you for what you are.