Thu 26 Jan 2017

First Aid

General Theory

This is all about getting oxygenated blood to their brain and core organs.

For this to happen:

  • Their heart must be pumping blood
  • Their lungs must be drawing in air
  • Their blood must stay in their body

We achieve this by:

  1. Clearing the airway, and keeping it clear
  2. If they are not breathing, we perform CPR (see below)
  3. If they are bleeding, we stop the bleed

Bandages

  1. Pressure on the wound
  2. Clean the wound as necessary (unless large amounts of blood loss).
  3. Unwind the small part of the gauze
  4. Reshape the pad as needed
  5. Put the pad in place
  6. Hook the small part of the gauze onto something (maybe ask the patient to help you)
  7. Wind the gauze around, making sure to cover the whole pad.
  8. Tie the knot against the wound for extra pressure.
  9. Check the patient's circulation for overtightness (colour, pinching).
  10. Consider adding extra bandages for a leaky wound.

Object still in wound

If there's an object still in the wound, we don't want to move it.

Instead, we hold it in place, and try to stop the bleed.

The usual way to do this is using multiple bandages.

Two of the bandages can be left rolled up, and placed next to the object.

We use the third to tie a figure of 8 to hold those in place. Cross-over behind the wound.

Don't move the object. Don't put pressure on the object. Careful.

Recovery Position

This is for a patient who is breathing, but unconcious.

The main thing is to keep the airway open, and to keep monitoring their breathing.

We're going to roll them towards ourselves, and onto their injury (so as to maintain pressure).

If they have a puncturing chest wound, keep the good lung on top.

  1. Bring their near arm up above their head.
  2. Straighten their near leg
  3. Bring their other far up against their neck and high-five them.
  4. Keeping your high-five in place, bring their far knee up and roll them towards you.
  5. Keep monitoring their breathing.

CPR

CardioPulmonary Resuscitation

Fails about half the time with a defibrilator, almost all of the time without.

Start as soon as you know someone isn't breathing. Keep going as long as you can. Get assistance, because it is hard.

Cycles of 2 rescue breaths (remember to hold the nose), 30 heart pumps (2 per second).

The heat pumps are the important thing.

A person has about 8 minutes of oxygen dissolved in their blood, so just pumping it will help for a while even if you mess up your rescue breaths.