DISCLAIMER: The information contained in this post does not constitute medical advice, or CPR or First Aid training. Please go to an approved training course for certification before rendering aid in a medical emergency.
A medical emergency can occur any time and any place. A traffic accident, slip on an icy sidewalk, fall from a ladder, or accident with a power or hand tool can cause serious injury or possible death. Inside the home may not be much safer, with the possibility of slipping in the tub, tripping over an electrical cord, falling off a chair while changing a CFL bulb, getting burned in the kitchen, getting a deep cut while chopping vegetables, or choking on a piece of food. Parents of young children are well aware of all the ways their little ones can be injured, too.
Why take a class
Knowing CPR and basic first aid could make the difference between life and death in an emergency. I’d strongly urge everyone to get this basic training. It will give you the knowledge of what to do in an emergency, and instead of freezing in fear when an emergency happens, you'll have the self-confidence to handle it.
Red Cross offers these courses in many communities. Follow the links from here to find your local chapter and course offerings. The courses may also be offered by fire departments, medical centers, outdoor recreation businesses, and colleges. Search online and make some local calls to find ones in your community.
If you have children, you probably should include the CPR course for infants and children in your personal training. If you have pets, check out the Pet First Aid classes offered by Red Cross and the Humane Society. The Red Cross has updated and streamlined their CPR and First Aid classes to make them easier, yet just as effective for the layperson. If you've been certified in the distant past, you might want to consider taking a refresher course.
I took the Red Cross combined CPR and First Aid class. The course was seven hours, including a lunch break, and covered adult CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), AED (automated external defibrillator), and first aid. The cost and time was well worth it as I feel I now have some valuable life skills at my disposal.
I am pretty sure the course instructor said that all states now have a Good Samaritan law but they will vary from state to state. It is important to know what they are in your area, especially if you become certified. Generally, Good Samaritan laws protect the responder providing care in an emergency, but, from a legal perspective, it is important to remember not to give care beyond your certification level. And remember, once you begin giving care, you are only permitted to stop once better trained personnel arrives, the situation becomes unsafe, or you are at the point of sheer exhaustion. Whether you have a legal duty to rescue in the first place depends on your area and situation.
Some highlights of what I learned
Please review the disclaimer above and remember these cannot substitute for getting training yourself!
With CPR, the purpose of the chest compressions is to keep blood circulating to the brain. The recommended number of compressions is now 30, rather than the old lower number, alternating with the two rescue breaths. The three most common errors in CPR, that make it less effective, are not starting it soon enough, chest compressions that are not deep enough, and the transitions being too slow between the breathing and compressions.
In the study, the average time it takes people to go from doing the compressions to giving the breath, or the reverse, is 15 seconds. That's too long. It allows the blood pressure to drop too much which means it will take a good 10-15 compressions just to get the blood properly circulating again. The target transition time is 5 seconds. Combined with the goal of 30 compressions completed in 18 seconds, this is going to be quite a workout for the responder. This pace was much faster than I realized before taking the class but all of us managed to complete the required two minutes of CPR (5 cycles of compression/breathing).
AEDs are present generally in malls, schools, and gyms, as well as some workplaces. They work by shocking the heart back into its normal rhythm. As with other first aid, minutes count. There is a 10% decrease in effectiveness with every minute's delay. Ironically, Las Vegas has the highest AED success rate (82%) because of the pervasive cameras in the casinos. If someone drops, responders are sent out immediately with all necessary equipment. If you feel a heart attack coming on, you might want to head out to the slots.
Hollywood always seems to dramatize the use of a defibrillator on someone by having the responder yell, "Clear!" There's actually a very good reason for this. When the machine is first doing its analysis, anyone touching the victim, or even using a cell phone within six feet, will interfere with the analysis. When the machine is administering the actual shock, it is imperative that no-one is touching the victim. The shock can injure others, and even stop the heartbeat of the person rendering aid....not to mention lose effectiveness for the person who needs it.
Oh, and a couple other little tidbits from the class. Obviously, don't use an AED if the victim is covered in flammable liquid. The shock will spark them into flame. The pads need to go on a bare chest. That does mean removing all clothing, so if a bystander can shield the accident scene with a blanket, it will help give the victim some dignity and privacy. If you have heart trouble, you might also want to consider forgoing nipple rings. Metal draws off the power and makes the shock ineffective. Our instructor told us that if we encounter nipple rings in this situation, we will have to rip. them. out. Ouch.
In the first aid section of the class, I learned that severe bleeding is going to require a lot of dressings. And, for neat freaks, it will require some self-control. When a dressing is soaked through with blood, it is not removed and replaced. A new one is added on top of the soaked one. Removing the first one can interfere with the clotting that is occurring and exacerbate the blood loss.
Neatness counts, though, in a mass disaster that includes multiple victims and severed body parts. Duct tape comes in handy in this situation. Match the correct foot, for instance, with each body (by checking the shoes), bag it, and duct-tape it to the proper victim. Yeah. Fun to think about that, isn't it? Almost as much fun as when he told us that Hollywood tends to gloss over one aspect of accidents. A victim of a severe accident will generally void bodily fluids. That's the nice way of saying they will almost certainly vomit, urinate, and defecate. It will not smell nice. It was about this time that I started realizing that I really hope I never encounter an emergency situation!
One thing I found a bit sad is that Red Cross has now had to add training for stroke and diabetes because they have become so prevalent in our society. They have always covered heart disease but the training for laypeople now includes information on recognizing and responding to the others. I find this sad because the incidence of these diseases indicates the declining health of the masses when some changes in diet and lifestyle could help reduce their prevalence.
If you respond to an emergency, remember to first assess the scene quickly to be sure it is safe for you to enter and render aid. Follow good hygiene practices, especially when dealing with any bodily fluids. Stock your first aid kit with non-latex gloves and a CPR breathing barrier. Remember to remove your gloves afterwards in a way to avoid contamination. Discard all contaminated waste in a Biohazard bag or double-bag it.
Is it enough?
As a public citizen certified in CPR, AED, and First Aid, I can help a victim survive by administering CPR to help them start breathing again, doing the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge something blocking their throat, slowing down severe bleeding, cooling a serious burn, lessening the symptoms of shock, preventing additional spinal cord injury from improper moving, beginning treatment for hypothermia or heat stroke, among other things. I cannot, however, make sure their throat doesn’t swell shut from irritation caused by choking, suture up a serious wound, remove anything that is impaled, further treat a burn, deal with a broken back, or ensure a full recovery from heat stroke. These require medical care beyond the ability of basic first aid.
Keep in mind, that if the availability of medical care decreases in the future, the limitations of such training will quickly become apparent. CPR and First Aid training is not about healing an injured person - it is about stabilizing the victim until they can be transported to a hospital to be treated by trained medical staff, with more medical equipment available. If a depressed economy leads to decreased access to emergency medical care, this could create some interesting problems.
If interested in the field, disaster preparedness, or worried about TEOTWAWKI*, one possibility is to get additional training. Again, the training is focused on stabilizing the injured person rather than healing them; however, with more training, you are skilled and certified to render more aid that may increase their odds of survival. As you advance through the training, each course requires an increasing commitment of time and money. After First Aid, there is training available for First Responder, EMT Basic, Advanced EMT, and then Paramedic. Beyond that, you'd have to enter nursing programs or medical school.
Another alternative is to take wilderness medicine courses. Because they are geared towards injuries happening in remote locations where an ambulance in not just a few minutes away, the training is longer and focuses on longer stabilization. My sweetie took a 16-hour Wilderness First Aid course over several days. Additional courses include Wilderness Advanced First Aid, Wilderness First Responder, and Wilderness EMT, all of which focus on an extended care environment. The National Outdoor Leadership School's Wilderness Medicine Institute offers these courses. Their schedule shows locations, courses, and tuition, and seems heavily weighted towards the Western U.S.
What should I do?
Take the basic classes and then decide if you want to go further with that training. Get to know your local paramedic or doctor if you live in a remote area. Keep yourself as healthy and fit as possible, and do your best to avoid accidents (post on this coming soon). Make sure you have a good first aid kit handy. Consider learning about alternative medical treatment, such as herbalism, homeopathic, and acupressure.
*The end of the world as we know it.
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7 comments:
Yikes, this is pretty depressing, though more people should probably get certified.
Stephanie, I did not mean for this to be depressing. Taking the class is actually somewhat empowering because you will learn how to handle an emergency. They don't necessarily occur that often - I've never needed this knowledge to treat someone else and have only needed assistance myself a couple times (for broken/cracked bones).
The point is to learn it before you ever need it. The depressing part to me is the possibility that eventually medical care may not be as accessible. That's already happening with the high cost of health insurance driving more people to use Urgent Care and the ER as a regular doctor's office, leading to very long wait times for emergency treatment. (4 hours for my sweetie's bike accident last year)
It sounds like you would make an excellent instructor!
A few years ago I took the Lifeguard course through the ARC. It was offered at Girl Scout camp so I went to camp for a week with my kids. All the other girls in the class were 16 and 17. About a week after class one of the girls was at her local YMCA and a man had a heart attack. She saved his life.
If anyone has kids in Girl or Boy Scouts the courses are usually offered at a significantly decreased cost. In my Council a CPR/FA/AED course costs $18, I think.
Are you going to take the Wilderness First Aid next?
IB Mommy - good tip about reduced fees and great to hear one of the girls put the info into practice! For a variety of reasons, my sweetie took the Wilderness First Aid class in place of me. He will be practicing his skills on me and sharing the information with me. I won't be certified but will learn how to deal with an emergency at home. He's considering taking the Wilderness First Responder course but it would require at least a week off from work and is somewhat costly. No final decision yet...
We have a group round here called St Johns. They run the ambulance service and lots of them are volunteers. The kids start at 5 (penguins) and work their way up to paramedics. It costs about $20 a year and a $50 deposit for a uniform.
To be eligible for the free ambulances it costs about $50 a year per family and even without the cost is minimal. (about $50 for a call out I think and even that can be waived at the discretion of the crew).
The whole thing is run as a charity so there is no profit - everything is funneled into providing a good service. Only in the cities will you find paid paramedics and they work through the service too.
I did my first aid through them (like everyone else) and the children go to classes once a week (more like fun really - along the same line as the scouts with badges etc).
Its a great system and provides a very necessary service.
viv in nz
I've done a few first aid courses with St. John's Ambulance & when I did my CPP. Never come across a pet one though.
A friend of mine was laying floorboards in an attic & almost cut his finger off. My eldest spent years in the SJA & I sent her down to deal with it (usually when accidents, usually RTAs, happen outside the house in Somerset, she was nowhere to be seen!). She ripped up sheets, stemmed the bleeding & got him stable enough for another friend to drive him to the A&E in the nearest hospital. There they proceeded to undo all her good work: we've had it drummed into us that you NEVER use cotton wool or any lint bearing dressings on a wound because of the dressing sticking to the wound & being reopened on removal. The hospital replaced bem's dressing with cotton wool until a doctor could assess the injury.... bem's action saved his finger. My daughter at 13 asked if I would object if she trained as a doctor, then became a paramedic (doctors don't know first aid), because she wanted a medical background & to work front line. She's now in med. school. (She asked me if I'd mind because her violent abusive father was in SJA & drove a private ambulance)
Wow, Viv, I'm envious. It sounds like a great community service and good way for everyone to get trained.
Killi, that's wonderful that your daughter found her calling. There are lots of pet first aid websites, often with species-specific information. I'm sure Amazon would also have some books for sale if you're interested in having one for reference.
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