A TEENAGER was able to come to his mum’s rescue after putting into practice lifesaving skills he learned merely weeks before during a new first aid course at his school.

Eddie Maloney, a Year 10 pupil at Harrow Way Community School, saved his mother, Kate, who had been choking on a piece of cake.

Weeks before the incident, Eddie learned first aid as part of Harrow Way’s initiative to deliver training to all Key Stage 4 students.

Eddie called on skills he had been taught through the first aid programme, only introduced earlier this year, and says his training proved critical.

He said: “I just ran over straight away and I knew what to do because of the course. If we hadn’t done the course I wouldn’t know what to do, I would have panicked.”

The Be Ready course involved five weeks of training tailored to help pupils deal with the most common first aid emergencies that can happen to teenagers and at home — which is where this particular episode happened earlier this month.

Kate had been in her kitchen when she started choking after “inhaling” a piece of cake.

“He could tell just by looking at me what had happened and very calmly proceeded to administer the back blows,” said Kate.

She added: “I didn’t really have a chance to think about it, it just happened so quick.

“I couldn’t get my breath and I just sort of ran out of the kitchen and Eddie came to my rescue.

“I thought normally he might panic, but he really didn’t – he really took charge of it.”

Harrow Way’s site and facilities manager Steve Badby, who delivered the training, said: “I am enormously proud of Eddie who, in the face of a genuine emergency, stayed calm, kept a level head and knew what to do and how to do it.

“It demonstrates the value of the first aid training and the difference it can make.”

The Be Ready initiative prepared pupils for first aid emergencies such as asthma, anaphylactic shock, cuts and grazes, heart attacks and choking.

The choking module, which Eddie put into practice, included the mechanics of why and how someone can choke, how to recognise when someone is choking, the importance of staying calm and how to treat a person choking.

A choke vest training aid was also used to teach students the correct way to perform back slaps and abdominal thrusts.

Steve added: “We wanted to give our students a highly-valued qualification and skills which would stand them in good stead for the future.”

Kate, who has not had first aid training herself, says this experience has made her think again.

She said: “I would highly recommend [doing] it. I’m going to do it myself now because I really wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t know where to do it, I wouldn’t know where to place my hands.”