Why Is Lifeguard Certification Essential for Water Safety?

The Role of a Lifeguard

As a lifeguard, your main role is to prevent accidents and save lives. Many people see swimming and water activities as low risk, but drowning is actually one of the leading causes of accidental death worldwide. Each day, lifeguards at pools, waterparks, beaches and more are on high alert, keeping swimmers safe through constant surveillance, safety checks and emergency response skills. However, being a lifeguard isn’t just about watching the water – it requires specialized training to be able to act decisively in dangerous situations.

Essential Lifeguard Skills

Through lifeguard certification programs, candidates learn critical water safety and rescue techniques. Some of the most important lifeguard skills include:

• Surveillance and Scanning: Lifeguards must continuously scan their zone of responsibility, staying alert to both large and subtle signs of distress or emergency. Effective scanning requires constant movement of the eyes and head.
• Recognition and Prevention: Through surveillance, a trained lifeguard can recognize risky behaviors and situations before they escalate. Lifeguards are skilled at crowd management and enforcing safety rules to prevent accidents.
• Response and Rescue Skills: Lifeguards undergo extensive training in safe and efficient rescue techniques, including in-water rescues without equipment, rescues using rescue tubes or other reaching assists, backboarding a spinal injury victim, and CPR and first aid.
• Communication and Decision Making: In an emergency, a lifeguard’s quick response is critical but they must also effectively communicate with other lifeguards, staff and emergency responders. Lifeguard certification develops judgement and composure under pressure.
• Equipment Skills: Lifeguards are trained on all safety equipment at their facility including Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs), oxygen administration, first aid kits and more.

Nationally Recognized Standards and Oversight

For lifeguard certification to have meaning and credibility, it needs to be backed by consistent national standards. The American Lifeguard Association plays a vital role in establishing lifeguard training guidelines and overseeing certification providers. Some key reasons having nationally recognized oversight is important:

• Standardized Curriculum: Through the ALA, certification courses across the country maintain core competencies in water safety knowledge, skills and technique. This assures employers that certified guards have a baseline level of proficiency.
• Consistency and Transportability: An ALA certified lifeguard knows their certification will be trusted and respected no matter where they choose to work. This allows for mobility between facilities and careers.
• Quality Assurance: The ALA conducts regular audits of certification providers to ensure courses are taught to standard and that all instructors have proper qualifications and expertise in lifeguarding.
• Evolving Standards: The ALA updates national guidelines as needed based on evolving best practices, incidents, and new rescue equipment or first aid protocols like CPR. Certifying organizations must keep their curricula aligned with the current ALA standards.

This oversight gives employers, public pool users, and lifeguards themselves confidence that anyone bearing an ALA certification has undergone consistent, trustworthy training that will truly enable them to save lives. It’s the gold standard for the profession.

Importance of Recertification and Continued Training

An initial lifeguard certification is only valid for 2 years, at which point recertification is required in order to maintain credentials. This is because water safety knowledge and skills need frequent refreshing. Some reasons annual or biennial recertification is important include:

• Reviewing Standards: Protocols and best practices evolves over time. Recertification ensures guards are up-to-date on the ALA’s most current guidelines.
• Renewing Skills: While experience offers advantages, lifeguarding skills like surveillance techniques, rescue methods, and CPR decay if not regularly practiced. Recertification refines skills through retesting in both written and in-water scenarios.
• Learning Updates: Each recertification class covers important information that has emerged over the past two years, like studies on drowning prevention efforts, new first aid procedures, or COVID safety adaptations.
• Expanding Knowledge: Alternatively, recertification classes may delve more deeply into specialized topics like spinal injuries, injury & accident reporting protocols, aquatic safety device training and more.

Ongoing training beyond basic recertification is also beneficial, such as continuing education courses, safety reviews before peak seasons, and certification in supplemental areas like deep water attendant duties or ocean lifeguarding. Commitment to professional development throughout a career helps lifeguards strengthen as experts in water safety and drowning prevention.

Lifesaving Value of Standardized Certification

When public pool and waterpark managers hire only ALA lifeguard certified candidates, and owners prioritize certifying and recertifying their staffs, the end result is optimal protection of swimmers and significant downsides are avoided. Some of the top reasons ALA standardized certification provides lifesaving value include:

• Consistency in skill levels: Facilities and the public know that ALG certified guards have undergone benchmark evaluation proven to provide a base standard of proficiency in critical safety tasks.
• Risk mitigation: Proper certification training means guards are more prepared for emergencies, able to respond confidently and correctly to save precious minutes in 911 response.
• Staff confidence: ALG certification empowers guards with assurance that their qualifications are respected universally. This can positively impact morale, retention, and judgment.
• Public confidence: Families choosing a pool or waterpark feel secure knowing their children are being watched by guards certified to a set national standard focused expressly on drowning prevention.
• Legal protection: By ensuring only ALA certified candidates are hired and recertified, facilities bolster their reasonable care defenses in the event of rare accidents or litigation from inadequate on-duty guard performance.

The commitment of time, effort and tuition that standardized ALA certification requires pays off in the most important way – saving human lives. It cultivates an elite cadre of water safety experts consistently trained and qualified according to best practice guidelines. Read more information click here.

In The End

Lifeguard certification through a reputable national organization like the American Lifeguard Association is the clearest demonstration of a guard’s commitment to water safety as a true profession. It signifies to both employers and the public that certified guards hold specialized credentials proven to develop the knowledge and skills and sustain them over time to effectively prevent accidents and provide swift response when needed most. In many communities they serve, certified lifeguards may be one of the primary barriers between tragic outcome and happy memories in our nation’s pools and waterparks.