[december meme] First Aid
Dec. 1st, 2020 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frith_in_thornsDecember meme! I'm writing posts this month on topics requested by friends. If you have an idea for something you'd like to hear me talk about, request it here!
First up, a request fromnaye: What's some first aid stuff you think everyone should know for real life?
(Obligatory disclaimer: I'm a qualified first-aider but very much Not A Doctor. My knowledge is within the UK setting. I am aware there are complexities involved with calling an ambulance in places like the US with a malfunctioning health system, but I cannot in good conscience recommend not doing so in a medical emergency.)
The main thing absolutely everyone should know is basic resuscitation and CPR. CPR is what you do on someone whose heart has stopped. The two main causes of this are a heart attack, or drowning. The point of CPR is to keep the person, until the paramedics get there, in a state which is potentially recoverable from.
I learnt CPR for the first time at Brownies, when I was 8 and got my first-aid badge, and then had it repeated at various times, got a badge in it at Guides etc, we went over some basics doing the Duke of Edinburgh award — so I really didn't realise until a few years ago that actually the vast majority of people have never been taught this! This really is something which everyone should get at secondary school, in my opinion.
But it's never too late to do something about this! St John's Ambulance runs regular trainings and probably does so in your area. They also have simple instructions and a video here. (It's worth looking at this right now even if you've been trained as they have a covid update.) And, I really can't emphasise this enough — this is one of the situations where even if you're not officially qualified, anything you do is worth it. In the wise words of the hilarious Australian woman who did my last update training: "If you're at a point where someone needs CPR, if no one does anything then they're dead. So don't worry about fucking up! Whatever you do, they can't get more dead! :D"
Basics: if someone's unconscious, call 999. DO THIS FIRST. If it turns out they were just deeply asleep on the floor for some reason, ok, no harm done. But if you think something's a medical emergency, then IT IS. 999 will walk you through what to do, which will be: check for breathing and pulse. If you're near a defibrillator, 999 will tell you where that is. Defibrillators (the electric shock thing you see on TV all the time) are green boxes located in many public places in the UK. They are designed for amateurs to operate, and are incredibly foolproof. When you open them they have a little voice which tells you what to do. You CAN use a defibrillator even if you have never heard of one before. There is seriously no way you can fuck this up. They do not shock someone if they can detect a heartbeat. (Community defibrillators are a literally amazing Public Health program and have saved so many lives.)
If you don't have access to a defibrillator you can do chest compressions, which is where you interlock your hands and push down HARD on the person's chest using the heel of your hand. You do it to a rhythm! The three songs which are used by everyone including the professionals, are "Nelly the Elephant", "Happy Birthday To You", and "Staying Alive". Don't do rescue breaths without training. They are in any case far less important. Keep going with the compressions until help arrives — the person will probably not start breathing on their own purely from CPR unless they drowned right in front of you, but you ARE helping even if it doesn't look like you are, by keeping blood circulating. If you have someone with you, you can trade off every couple of minutes. CPR is really hard work.
That's my big piece of advice. Peoples' lives genuinely get saved every year because of members of the public who have an idea of what to do, or simply who call 999 and follow instructions.
I have loads of other first aid advice, which can mostly be given as pithy sentences. Don't pull out anything embedded in a bleeding wound — go to the emergency room for them to do it. Don't ever put anything in the mouth of someone having a seizure — just move everything away that they could bang into, and wait for the seizure to finish on its own. If someone's choking (properly choking, so that they can't talk) every second counts — call 999 FIRST (preferably delegate someone to do it) and then whack the person's back hard between their shoulder blades and do that five times, pause, keep going. (Don't try and badly do the Heimlich manoeuvre if you don't actually know it.) People are sometimes reluctant to call 999 when they should, but you are not wasting anyone's time! If you're among strangers, point at someone and order that person to call 999, don't just assume someone will. Don't take someone's glasses off if you don't actually have to -- the glasses will probably get lost, and then the person will have to wake up in hospital without them. If someone is being very "helping" in a non-helpful way, and you're in Britain, get them to make a cup of tea. Then they feel useful, and you can have tea. If you've had to deal with an emergency, sit down after it's all over and let people look after *you*. (It's a good time to drink that tea.)
Also, never ever put yourself in danger trying to help. If you get injured too, then when the paramedics turn up, now they have *two* casualties to deal with.
Thanks for reading!
First up, a request from
naye: What's some first aid stuff you think everyone should know for real life?(Obligatory disclaimer: I'm a qualified first-aider but very much Not A Doctor. My knowledge is within the UK setting. I am aware there are complexities involved with calling an ambulance in places like the US with a malfunctioning health system, but I cannot in good conscience recommend not doing so in a medical emergency.)
The main thing absolutely everyone should know is basic resuscitation and CPR. CPR is what you do on someone whose heart has stopped. The two main causes of this are a heart attack, or drowning. The point of CPR is to keep the person, until the paramedics get there, in a state which is potentially recoverable from.
I learnt CPR for the first time at Brownies, when I was 8 and got my first-aid badge, and then had it repeated at various times, got a badge in it at Guides etc, we went over some basics doing the Duke of Edinburgh award — so I really didn't realise until a few years ago that actually the vast majority of people have never been taught this! This really is something which everyone should get at secondary school, in my opinion.
But it's never too late to do something about this! St John's Ambulance runs regular trainings and probably does so in your area. They also have simple instructions and a video here. (It's worth looking at this right now even if you've been trained as they have a covid update.) And, I really can't emphasise this enough — this is one of the situations where even if you're not officially qualified, anything you do is worth it. In the wise words of the hilarious Australian woman who did my last update training: "If you're at a point where someone needs CPR, if no one does anything then they're dead. So don't worry about fucking up! Whatever you do, they can't get more dead! :D"
Basics: if someone's unconscious, call 999. DO THIS FIRST. If it turns out they were just deeply asleep on the floor for some reason, ok, no harm done. But if you think something's a medical emergency, then IT IS. 999 will walk you through what to do, which will be: check for breathing and pulse. If you're near a defibrillator, 999 will tell you where that is. Defibrillators (the electric shock thing you see on TV all the time) are green boxes located in many public places in the UK. They are designed for amateurs to operate, and are incredibly foolproof. When you open them they have a little voice which tells you what to do. You CAN use a defibrillator even if you have never heard of one before. There is seriously no way you can fuck this up. They do not shock someone if they can detect a heartbeat. (Community defibrillators are a literally amazing Public Health program and have saved so many lives.)
If you don't have access to a defibrillator you can do chest compressions, which is where you interlock your hands and push down HARD on the person's chest using the heel of your hand. You do it to a rhythm! The three songs which are used by everyone including the professionals, are "Nelly the Elephant", "Happy Birthday To You", and "Staying Alive". Don't do rescue breaths without training. They are in any case far less important. Keep going with the compressions until help arrives — the person will probably not start breathing on their own purely from CPR unless they drowned right in front of you, but you ARE helping even if it doesn't look like you are, by keeping blood circulating. If you have someone with you, you can trade off every couple of minutes. CPR is really hard work.
That's my big piece of advice. Peoples' lives genuinely get saved every year because of members of the public who have an idea of what to do, or simply who call 999 and follow instructions.
I have loads of other first aid advice, which can mostly be given as pithy sentences. Don't pull out anything embedded in a bleeding wound — go to the emergency room for them to do it. Don't ever put anything in the mouth of someone having a seizure — just move everything away that they could bang into, and wait for the seizure to finish on its own. If someone's choking (properly choking, so that they can't talk) every second counts — call 999 FIRST (preferably delegate someone to do it) and then whack the person's back hard between their shoulder blades and do that five times, pause, keep going. (Don't try and badly do the Heimlich manoeuvre if you don't actually know it.) People are sometimes reluctant to call 999 when they should, but you are not wasting anyone's time! If you're among strangers, point at someone and order that person to call 999, don't just assume someone will. Don't take someone's glasses off if you don't actually have to -- the glasses will probably get lost, and then the person will have to wake up in hospital without them. If someone is being very "helping" in a non-helpful way, and you're in Britain, get them to make a cup of tea. Then they feel useful, and you can have tea. If you've had to deal with an emergency, sit down after it's all over and let people look after *you*. (It's a good time to drink that tea.)
Also, never ever put yourself in danger trying to help. If you get injured too, then when the paramedics turn up, now they have *two* casualties to deal with.
Thanks for reading!
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Date: 2020-12-01 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-01 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 03:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 11:00 am (UTC)I've been drilling myself in the "in case of emergency call/pick a specific person to call 112" and it paid off at work just pre-Covid. I don't want to give any details because of privacy concerns, but it was a case of another student finding someone in distress and after making sure I didn't need to do CPR I called the school nurse (who is in the same building) and then 112 and got a colleague to take over at the info desk so I could stay on the line. Everything ended as happily as it could have, with the person already feeling much better when the EMTs arrived but NO REGRETS. It could so easily have gone worse and hesitating about calling for help could've been disastrous.
I'm terrified of having to do chest compressions, and I know the stats for someone that far gone actually making it are...not good. But I'm determined to try. (I was signed up for an in-person training class and then: Covid.) And I do like the cheerful "Well they can't get more dead!" attitude.
We have a defibrillator at work! And it talks! Once you activate it it will walk through what you have to do step by step (the steps include CALL 112) so I'm always relieved to know it's going to help me if I freak out.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 04:05 pm (UTC)Defibrillators are great! Not enough people are aware that they even exist, really. And they are absolutely designed to be as user-friendly as possible to random members of the public :) Here you can start them but they won't open until you've called 999 and the call handler gives you the unlock code, so you have both the friendly box AND the 999 person there to give instructions, you're not muddling though it on your own :)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-02 04:02 pm (UTC)Love your general advice, especially "If you're among strangers, point at someone and order that person to call 999." Thank you for that.
I never truly understood that yes, most people DO freeze up in an emergency until several years ago I was driving with my then-partner (whom I thought was an incredibly alert, responsive person). We were in the car (he was driving) and passed a person who just... collapsed on the sidewalk. I yelled at him to pull over and when he didn't, I started to open the car door (we weren't going very fast). That shook him, and he pulled into the next parking lot. I ran (literally, one of like three times in my life I've ever actually sprinted) to the person who, yes, was having a seizure. Everything turned out okay, but his complete non-reaction to what I considered an Actual Emergency was a real wake-up call.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 01:00 am (UTC)Freezing up in an emergency is SO common! It's one of the reasons that responder training involves a lot of roleplay and explicit instruction that one of the things you HAVE to do is visibly Take Charge of the situation -- it feels kind of silly at the time, but it's so helpful to ingrain this stuff.
Along with the above, my little rant about the US and this stuff is that the UK, Europe, Australasia etc all very purposefully make sure that each others' emergency numbers all work in all the countries, because in a stressful situation you're more likely to dial the one you're used to. We all also do the same with 911. Does the US reciprocate? No, it does not.
(Bonus knowledge: the reason we have 999 as our emergency number is so that a child or someone in the dark can keep hammering away on the 9 (or spinning the dial on old rotary phones -- it was also chosen to be the 9 as that's at the end of the dial so easy to find) and it will connect as easily as possible. There have been some tragic situations in the US where people, particularly children, tried to dial 911 in a building such as a hotel where you have to dial "9" to get an outside line, and they didn't realise that so as far as the phone line was concerned they were only dialing "11" and it didn't go anywhere.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 01:16 am (UTC)Anyway, yes, the US is awful for so many big reasons but also so many seemingly petty ones like this.
it's so helpful to ingrain this stuff
*nods vigorously*
no subject
Date: 2020-12-03 10:00 pm (UTC)I only had to call the ambulance once, when I witnessed a car crashing into a motorcycle. I called the ambulance immediately and got put on hold - I never even considered that I could be put on hold when calling an emergency line! Though of course it does make sense, there were half a dozen witnesses and I think all of us called immediately.
That was only a few years after I did my first aid class to get my driving license, but it was hard to remember anything while looking at someone lying on the street injured and bleeding. A few other people were doing first aid, and I think I just stood around for a minute or two with a few others before I remembered to put up a warning triangle because the accident happened right after a turn.
Hm, I should really do a refresher course (after the pandemic.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-06 02:51 am (UTC)Emergency-wise, my household reacts very differently to things. I've been raised in an environment where injuries and danger weren't taken very seriously, plus apparently my family's threshold for pain is high. (Something you don't learn about until you mingle with other humans and they get hurt. Suddenly, a lot of h/c fanworks made so much more sense!) My wife however, comes from an environment where illnesses and injuries were taken very seriously, and has a very low pain tolerance. We definitively react to emergencies and injuries very, very differently! Where she faints at a small cut, I've walked around for hours with broken bones. ^^;;;