What are the types of basic first aid skills?

The basic first aid skills we often talk about do not have too rigid official classification standards. They are essentially practical skills that are aimed at the golden rescue time before the hospital and can be operated by ordinary people without complex medical equipment. The core covers rapid injury assessment, trauma rescue, common emergency intervention, and environmental accident response. They are all designed according to actual emergency scenarios and will not be pretentious.

I have been a volunteer community first aid instructor for almost three years, and the most common question I encounter is "I'm not a doctor, is it useful to learn this?" Actually, it's just the most basic injury assessment. Many people's first reaction when someone falls to the ground is to shake their shoulders and call someone, regardless of whether there are any leaks or falling objects around them. If you are facing a secondary risk, you will not spend 10 seconds to call someone on the shoulder or touch the carotid artery to check whether there is breathing or heartbeat. A random operation will delay the optimal treatment time. This is not a "big skill", but it is the prerequisite for all first aid operations. Without this step, everything you do after this may be in vain.

If after the assessment it is found that the situation is a trauma, such as a fall while riding a bicycle, bleeding cuts, sprained ankles, or even suspected fractures, trauma rescue skills such as hemostasis, bandaging, fixation, and transportation will be used. Last month, a delivery boy at the gate of the community was knocked down by a car, and his ankle was swollen like a steamed bun. There happened to be someone who had learned first aid next to him. The high school student directly removed the hard support board of his school bag as a temporary splint, and wrapped it with a non-woven bag from take-out and fixed it, so that he could not move his foot casually. Later, he went to the hospital to find out that it was just a bone fracture. If he had moved casually at that time, it might have been dislocated and broken. These operations did not require professional medical equipment at all, and common things around him could be used as tools.

Compared with trauma, what we encounter more often in daily life is emergency first aid. The popularity of cardiopulmonary resuscitation and AED use has become very high in the past two years. The young man who rescued a 42-year-old uncle with a heart attack in the business district last year was the one who took the test at our site. First aid certificate. At that time, the uncle fell to the ground unconscious and not breathing. He performed chest compressions and searched for the AED in the mall. He rescued the person in less than 4 minutes. If he had to wait for 120 emergency personnel to arrive, it would take at least 10 minutes, and there was a high probability that he would suffer irreversible brain damage if he was rescued. There is also the Heimlich maneuver for foreign body obstruction in the airway. Not long ago, my best friend’s 3-year-old child had jelly stuck in her throat and her face turned purple. She followed the learned movements and pressed the jelly block three times before spitting it out. If she had to wait to be sent to the hospital, it might be too late. Examples of common emergency intervention skills include preventing suffocation during epileptic seizures, rapid cooling of heat stroke, and giving sugar water for hypoglycemia.

Many people tend to miss the first aid skills related to environmental accidents. For example, if you encounter someone drowning in the countryside in the summer, you must not blindly go into the water to rescue. First, ask someone to find long sticks and floating objects. After rescue, first remove foreign objects from the mouth and nose and ventilate. These are all standard drowning first aid operations.； There are also treatments for low-temperature frostbite in winter, proximal banding after being bitten by a snake or insect during a spring outing, and soapy water showering after being bitten by a cat or dog. These are all basic first aid procedures. First aid is not required only for fainting and bleeding.

Oh, by the way, there are a lot of controversies now. Many old people will say, "I know that applying toothpaste for burns and raising your head for nosebleeds are also first aid." The attitude of the industry has always been very clear. Folk remedies that have no evidence-based medical basis and may aggravate injuries are definitely not considered formal basic first aid skills. We will deliberately bring up these common misunderstandings in every training. After all, wrong first aid operations are sometimes more harmful than no rescue.

In fact, there is really no need to worry about how to classify these skills. Ordinary people can take 1 to 2 days to participate in formal Red Cross first aid training, become familiar with several commonly used operations, do not panic when encountering problems, and dare to use them within a safe range. They are already much better than the vast majority of people who know nothing.