Teaching first aid through the telephone game: How did we end up here

Teaching first aid through the telephone game: How did we end up here?

January 26, 2026 - Defence Stories

Estimated read time - 2:15

The telephone game is well known: a message is passed from person to person, and as more people pass it on, it often ends up completely distorted and even incomprehensible.

It's fun when you're doing it as a game with friends. But when you're teaching first aid, it's exactly what you want to avoid.

Chief Warrant Officer (CWO) Yann Gauthier remembers a similar situation in Ukraine during a deployment in 2016. He and a dozen other members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) were assigned to train Ukrainian soldiers on first aid in a combat environment.

"We had to give medical training that focused on the actual needs in a modern war and the operational reality on the ground," says CWO Gauthier.

His supervisor, Major (Maj) Stéphane Roy, aimed even higher: his goal was to deliver the first course for training first aid instructors to contribute to Ukraine's autonomy.

The group was faced with several challenges.

First, there were the different legal contexts. In Ukraine, the laws on the use of invasive techniques such as needle decompression were more specific. That meant the group had to adapt the content of the training and obtain the necessary authorizations.

Next, the team encountered a significant language barrier. CWO Gauthier and his colleagues had to make sure that the information being passed on was correct.

"In the medical field, we have our own terminology, whether you're francophone, anglophone or Ukrainian," he explains.

So, they played the telephone game: their instructions were passed on from French to English to Ukrainian, often through interpreters with different accents.

The presence of international partners, in particular from the UK and the U.S., while crucial, also brought complications.

"Every country had its own idea of what should be taught, despite their different standards," CWO Gauthier recalls. "Imagine the issues if three standards of care were taught at the same time to the same person. The care would not be the same, and the equipment could have been very different."

Cooperation, both within the contingent and externally with the other nations, was crucial for standardizing the medical procedures.

The mission was part of Operation UNIFIER, launched in 2015 by the CAF in support of Ukraine. CWO Gauthier, who received a commendation from the Ukrainian Defence Minister, reminds us that the mission is ongoing.

"Operation UNIFIER is continuing, even though the conflict in Ukraine has changed drastically," he says. "I'm proud of the people who are there now, giving training to the Ukrainian Army, because they are contributing to the fact that there's someone, somewhere, who will survive their injuries."

CWO Gauthier, who today is Chief Warrant Officer of the Royal Canadian Medical Service, was awarded the Order of Military Merit in 2025. He thanks the people who made this journey possible: his family, his colleagues, and above all his mentor, Maj Stéphane Roy, who passed away in 2017.