It’s a question most of us would rather ignore and just hope the situation never arises.

Even if something did happen in from of us, though, most of us would be desperately hoping that someone nearby did have the skills we didn’t, and that someone else would take control.

But what if everybody there was waiting for someone else to act?

If push really came to shove, would you know what to do?

Two Charles Sturt University rugby players knew what to do on Saturday afternoon, and Orange City coach Steve Hamson is still here to tell the tale as a result.

Hamson was incredibly fortunate that CSU Bathurst players Andrew Fraser and Jack Keppel were just metres away when he collapsed to the ground at Pride Park.

He was even more fortunate that both young men were paramedics students whose medical emergency training quickly clicked into gear.

They led an effort to commence CPR and the use of a defibrillator which, with the assistance of registered nurse Wendy Baker and others near by, kept Mr Hamson alive until ambulance officers arrived on scene about 15 minutes later.

Mr Hamson was operated on at Orange Hospital that same afternoon.

The Central Western Daily and the whole city hopes he will, in time, make a full recovery.

But witnesses on the scene say they doubt it would have been such a good outcome had the two CSU students not been there.

It’s a sobering thought.

Of course, it’s no surprise that two paramedics students had the skills required to perform CPR and the broader community cannot expect to ever be skilled to the same level as those two young men.

But Saturday’s incident graphically illustrates the life-saving benefits to the wider community of people undertaking at least basic first aid training.

Just as a high rate of immunisation creates a herd protection for the broader community, so too can a high rate of CPR and first aid training make us all safer.

None of us would ever hope to be in a position to use such skills but it must be far better to have the knowledge and not need it than for the opposite to be the case.

Think about signing up to a first aid course today. It might one day be a life-and-death decision.