CPR in practice

I hope everyone has seen the British Heart Foundation's advert with Vinnie Jones demonstrating cardio pulmonary resuscitation (CPR). If you haven't seen it yet, watch the YouTube video now.

What the British Heart Foundation are trying to achieve with this advert is to show that you don't need any formal qualifications in order to perform CPR, all you need is a bit of knowledge and perhaps a lot of confidence.
  
I've been a first aider for several years and have carried out CPR on a Resusci Anne more times than I care to remember. When it comes to CPR procedures I'd like to think I'm quite comfortable with what to do.
  
This is just as well as this morning I found myself in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to perform CPR for real. Not on a manikin this time, but on an elderly gentleman who had collapsed in the supermarket and stopped breathing.
  
What surprised me to begin with was how spongy the chest felt, I expected it to be more rigid. Don't get me wrong, the Resusci Anne is a fantastic training aid, but it doesn't feel anything like a real chest. What really shocked me though was the colour of the patient's face. Perhaps one day they'll produce a manikin that gradually turns a bright purple colour.
  
What no manikin will ever be able to teach you is how you are going to feel afterwards. Once the paramedics had taken the patient to hospital, it took a great deal of will power just to stop myself throwing up in the middle of the supermarket.
  
I don't know what the final outcome was once the paramedics had taken the patient to hospital, I probably never will know. What I do know is that if no one had performed CPR, the patient certainly would have died. I think a wee bit of nausea is a reasonable price to pay for potentially saving a life.

Message in a bottle

If you call or n ambulance and are conscious when it arrives then I’m sure you’re perfectly capable of telling the ambulance crew your medical details and who you would like them to contact. But what if you’re not conscious? What if there are no friends or family around to pass on this information? What if it was your neighbours who called the ambulance and they don’t know that much about you?
  
It's not essential the ambulance crew knows everything about you but some information may help in reaching a diagnosis, deciding upon a treatment or establishing what other risk factors there may be.
  
The Lions Club have for some time been promoting a system that can help achieve this, a system so simple that it has rapidly gained popularity – Message in a Bottle.
  
So what is the message? The message is your medical details – medical conditions, medications, allergies, next of kin and who your GP / health visitor is. You can also note down personal details (hair / eye colour, distinguishing marks, even a photo) just so the ambulance crew can recognise the person they’re dealing with is definitely you.
  
The template the Lions Club use even includes information on pets. Presumably the last thing the ambulance crew want is to suddenly find out the pet Rottweiler who had been sleeping peacefully upstairs has just woken and is now hungry.
  
And the bottle? The bottle is just somewhere to keep the message protected and a plastic bottle will normally keep it safe and dry. This is especially the case if the bottle is to be kept in the fridge?
  
Why on earth would you keep it in the fridge? Well first of all the kitchen is probably the most recognisable room in the house so the ambulance crew will be able to locate it quickly and the fridge is normally a fairly identifiable piece of equipment so finding it shouldn’t be a problem. 
  
The message in a bottle kit the Lions Club give out includes a sheet of paper with a template for writing down your medical details. It includes a sealable plastic tube that the medical form can be placed inside so that it’s protected. Finally it includes two stickers; one should be placed on the fridge door to aid identification, and the other should be placed on the inside of your front door so ambulance crew know to check your fridge.
  
For further information on the Message in a Bottle scheme, or to find out how you could get a bottle, then visit the Lions Club web site.
  
It’s such a simple system and it could make the ambulance crew’s job much easier. If their job is much easier, you will be in much safer hands.

Happy new year, it's resolution time

It’s that time of year again.  On New Year’s Eve we reflected on all that we've done over the past year, all our successes, all our failures... other moments. On New Year’s Day we can start to think about this coming year, what we can do to better ourselves, better our families or better our communities. So what are your plans for the new year, have you made any resolutions yet?

  

When thinking about resolutions, I suspect the two more common categories are learning a new skill and doing more for charity. So here’s a thought, why not kill two birds with one stone? Learn first aid and become a volunteer first aider with St John Ambulance.
  

Learning first aid is perhaps the greatest skill you could learn. Okay so you may end up doing things as seemingly mundane as putting a plaster on a paper cut, but ultimately you could save someone’s life. Now that sounds like a pretty damn good skill to learn. Each year in the UK up to 150,000 people die in situations where first aid could have made the difference. Given the chance, wouldn't you want to be that difference? I know I would.

  

St John Ambulance are always seeking new volunteers to help provide first aid cover at loads of public events, many of which would not be able to go ahead without first aiders present. You don't even need a prior knowledge of first aid as full training will be given. Training goes beyond just learning first aid and many more skills can be developed - communications, driving, teaching, radio operating, management and leadership.
  
So why not give it a go, what have you got to lose?

  

Okay so maybe it would be more accurate to say that the most common resolution people make is to do more exercise and lose weight. Alas, St John Ambulance can’t really help you with that. Unless of course you want to run a marathon and raise money - kill three birds with one stone*.
  

* Please note, no actual birds were harmed in the writing of this blog.