When Petra Spencer-Arscott became a trainer at the Bermuda Red Cross, her goal was to eventually teach life-saving skills to at least half of Bermuda. Twenty-two years later, she thinks she has come close to that.

“I am now teaching my second generation of students,” the 66-year-old said. “I have trained the children of people I taught when I started. I have also retrained a lot of people.”

Next month she retires from her current post as health and safety officer at the charity on Berry Hill Road in Paget.

“I am definitely going to miss working at the Bermuda Red Cross,” she said. “It is going to be a huge change for me. The administrative side of things was never my favourite part. I always loved being in the classroom and working with various communities.”

Born in Canada, she first learnt first-aid skills including cardio pulmonary resuscitation, while volunteering with the fire department in Meaford, Ontario, Canada.

“I was in my early twenties and my ex-partner was with the fire department,” she explained. “I never fought any fires. I was there strictly as support.”

She moved to the island with her Bermudian husband, Michael Spencer-Arscott, in 1997.

“I worked in the hotel and restaurant industry for most of my working life,” she said. “I often used my first-aid skills there for choking, or burns, especially in the kitchen.

“In the hospitality industry, people are always tripping and falling, particularly when they have partied a little too hard. So first-aid has always, in some ways, been a part of my life.”

In 2002, she was growing tired of the late nights in the hospitality industry so she took a job as a first-aid trainer at the Bermuda Red Cross. Today, she is the health and safety officer there.

Teaching was a “hot mess” for her when she began.

“The first class I taught, I totally froze,” she said. “I said ‘hi, I am Petra Spencer-Arscott’ and that was as far as I got.”

Her sister-in-law Ann Spencer-Arscott, executive director of the organisation, stepped in.

Mrs Spencer-Arscott, though, soon got the hang of things.

“You have to make sure you are accommodating the people you are teaching,” she said. “CPR is very exact. If you do not do it exactly right then you will not get the result you need.”

There also other skills needed, such as making sure you are safe at the scene of an accident.

“You do not want to just go barrelling in, when you yourself might be at risk,” she said. “There is a process to it.”

Trainers must recertify every two years, to keep their skills fresh, and to stay up to date with frequent changes in first-aid teaching methods and equipment.

“The biggest change in the last 20 years is the use of automated external defibrillators in the public purview,” she said. “These are known as AEDs. They have had an amazing impact for people that have collapsed from cardiac arrest.”

AEDs provide equipment for a bystander to shock someone’s heart back into a rhythm after they have gone into cardiac arrest.

The devices can now be found in many public buildings in Bermuda. Some types require prior training to use, but many newer versions can now walk the user through the CPR process without any prior knowledge.

The mannequins used in CPR training have also evolved.

“When I started, we were using these little plastic, half people,” Mrs Spencer-Arscott said. “Now they are CPR-feedback mannequins. They actually tell you when you are pushing hard enough and deep enough. That makes it easier for the instructors as well.”

She has had many former students return to tell her they used the skills they learnt from her.

“One of my favourite examples was from a basics of babysitting course I taught for 12 to 16-year-olds,” she said. “One of the young women who took the course was also doing a sailing class through the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club.”

The 14-year-old used her first-aid training, almost as soon as she graduated from the Bermuda Red Cross programme.

“She was out in the boat and one of her sailing partners had a seizure,” Mrs Spencer-Arscott said. “She was able to get her and the boat back to safety, where she could help.”

Four years ago, everything came full circle when Mr Spencer-Arscott was involved in a road traffic accident at the junction of Middle Road and T-Street in Devonshire.

“He was on a motorcycle,” Mrs Spencer-Arscott said. “Two passers-by stopped to help. He had cut his leg badly, and they made a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

“While they were helping him, he told them that I taught first-aid. They asked him my name. Then they said, ‘well now we really have to make sure you are all right, because your wife taught us this’.”

The outcome of the accident would have been much worse without the volunteers’ help.

“So it all feeds back,” she said. “That is what you want to see in the community. This is all about making sure that we are all as safe as possible.”

Sadly, her husband died in July, only a few days after their first grandchild, Elliot was born in Canada.

“We were planning to move back to Canada anyway, to spend more time with our daughter Kirsten and the baby,” she said.

Now she is leaving Bermuda a few weeks earlier than expected.

Last week, colleagues at the Bermuda Red Cross surprised her with a goodbye party.

“They told me we were having a staff meeting,” she said. “It turned out to be a going away party. It was lovely. Working here with the Bermuda Red Cross has been pure joy.”