Just done a 2-day Senior First Aid course (it is a requirement of being a Girl Guide leader). It was held at the Guide HQ and there were 17 other Guide leaders or older Guides there.
Great fun bunch of people and the instructor was very knowledgeable and good at communicating. She kept the course fun and casual but we did learn a lot. I was surprised at how tired I was at the end of each day.
We had three practical assessments - one for CPR and two for general first aid and a 50 question written exam (luckily open book). I passed.
Couple of interesting things came out of the course:
1. Legal side of rendering first aid
- not required to unless you want to. Once you start you can't stop until ambulance arrives / you are exhausted or the situation becomes dangerous
- protected from suing under the "Good Samaritan" legislation (in all Aust states)
2. Change in CPR techniques
- the push from the Australian Resuscitation Council is to get people to do some and not stress too much of getting everything perfect or not doing it because you're scared of messing up things. So no longer measuring to get the right spot - just aim for the centre of the chest.
- rhythm is 30 compressions then 2 breaths. The 30 compressions are to be done fast (very fast), around 100 per minute. This is the same for infants & babies.
- if you don't want to do the breaths, doing the compressions are fine
- an attempt is better than no attempt
- after the primary survey (for signs of life) just keep going with CPR - no need to stop and check for signs of life again (oh, and no need to check for pulse ever).
3. Jelly fish stings
- Tropical jelly fish (Geraldton to Bundaberg north) - flush with vinegar, remove tentacles
- Temperate jelly fish - flush with sea water, remove tentacles
4. Snake bite
- bandage directly over site, then bandage limb from extremity towards heart as far as you can, make mark over bite site to assist hospital, immobilise.
5. Breaks
- if ambulance is less than 1hr away don't do anything
- if more than that, bandage as far as possible without moving the limb
oh, and the other funny thing was that I was the only person in the class who knew what "priapism" was .. thanks, of course, to Ambulance Driver.
See i knew reading blogs was educational!
4 comments:
protected from suing under the "Good Samaritan" legislation (in all Aust states)
THAT is probably the most important part! Also, based on my real world experience in VFD/Rescue you probably WILL break ribs if you are doing it right, but ribs can be healed, no heartbeat can't!
Thank you for being proactive in this!
WV-dinemac Guess you need to eat your mac and cheese too!
Thanks for the reminder Jim, forgot that bit. One of the other ladies asked if you should be worried about breaking ribs when doing CPR and the answer was "If you're doing it correctly you more than likely WILL break ribs."
I was practicing on a child-sized dummy and while I was doing compressions my team mate goes, "Just imagine the ribs cracking while you're doing that!" - eeek!
My brother was an RN, he'd regale us of Code Blues and cracking ribs...something I have to look forward to, I guess!
"priapism" LOL...what does it mean (if anything) that I already knew what it meant before reading AD?
Thanks for the recap. I did mine 18 months ago and had forgotten some of that! :o)
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