Lifesaving Merit Badge

Two gates, and one of them is another merit badge

Requirements 1 and 2 both say the same thing about themselves: they come before requirements 3 through 15.

• Requirement 1: review the principles of Safe Swim Defense with your counselor.
• Requirement 2(a): earn the Swimming merit badge.
• Requirement 2(b): swim 400 continuous yards using front crawl, sidestroke, breaststroke and elementary backstroke, at least 50 continuous yards of each, strongly and in good form with rhythmic breathing. Thirteen of the seventeen requirements are behind all of that. Nothing in the water from requirement 3 onwards can be signed off until it is done.

Start Swimming first, and start it now

Requirement 2(a) is one line here and a whole merit badge in practice: nine requirements with a swimmer test of their own. There is a separate plan for the Swimming merit badge on this site.

This is the difference between Lifesaving and Emergency Preparedness, which also contains another badge: Emergency Preparedness lets you work everything else while First Aid runs. Lifesaving does not. Here the other badge is a gate.

What you can do while the gate is still shut

Requirements 16 and 17 are outside the gate. It names 3 through 15 and stops there. Resuscitation knowledge and CPR on a mannequin, and the discussion of hypothermia, dehydration, heat illness, cramps, sunburn, stings and hyperventilation, can all be done while the Swimming badge and the 400-yard swim are still outstanding.

Requirement 16(b) is the one to start early anyway, because it needs somebody else's diary: CPR skills demonstrated on a mannequin under the guidance of a current CPR/AED instructor trained by a nationally certified provider. That is a course to be found and booked, not an afternoon to be arranged.

Reach, throw, row, go. The badge is built in that order

Requirement 3(c) asks you to explain the order of methods in water rescue, and requirements 4 to 7 then walk through them in that order: reaching rescues, throwing rescues, watching a rowing rescue, and listing the aids for a "go" rescue. Requirement 3(e) asks when an in-water rescue should not be attempted at all.

Everything from requirement 8 onwards is a "go" rescue, and it escalates deliberately: buoyant aid, then nonbuoyant aid, then no equipment at all, then an unconscious subject, then a submerged one, then a spinal injury. Read in order it is a syllabus rather than a list.

What this page is

The Lifesaving merit badge, laid out so the gate is visible before you plan around it. It is not a copy of the requirements: each step is a short label with a link to the official requirements, which are what actually governs and which change from year to year.

Nothing here decides whether it is safe to get in the water. Safe Swim Defense and your counselor do that.