What are the basic first aid skills?

The core of the basic first aid skills we talk about every day is based on the principle of "saving lives first and treating injuries later", covering the whole process of practical skills from on-site judgment to emergency treatment. Ordinary people do not need to master overly complicated clinical operations. If they are proficient in several core skills, they can be of great help in the golden first aid window before the 120 arrival.

Last week, when I was working as an emergency volunteer in the business district, I happened to encounter a three-year-old child who choked on jelly and turned purple from holding it in. His parents were so panicked that they could only shed tears. An office worker next to him who had just attended the company's first aid training came over and used the Heimlich maneuver on his upper abdomen twice. He coughed up half of the jelly in less than 30 seconds. It would take at least 10 minutes to wait for the ambulance to arrive, so there might be some danger.

When many people learn first aid, they first learn CPR and hemostasis, which seem to be "powerful" operations. In fact, the most easily overlooked is the on-site risk assessment in the first step. I have to repeat this every time I go to the community to preach. There was news in the past two years. At the scene of a car accident, enthusiastic passers-by rushed to save people. They did not pay attention to the car coming from behind and did not put up a warning triangle. As a result, they were hit by the car behind and seriously injured. They were going to help but instead caused chaos. First confirm whether there are any risks such as electric leakage, falling rocks, or traffic around you, then squat down and pat your shoulder to call someone to judge your consciousness, feel the carotid artery and check the rise and fall of the chest to judge the breathing pulse, and then check whether there are any signs of suspicious spinal and cervical spine injuries such as limb deformity and neck pain, and then decide whether to move. How to move and how to deal with it? These seemingly inconspicuous steps are actually the prerequisite for all first aid actions. Indiscriminate movement can easily cause secondary injuries. For example, if you fall on the back of your head and suspect a fracture of the cervical spine, if you go up and help the person up to sit, it may directly compress the nerves and cause paraplegia.

The highest priority is definitely life-saving skills, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and the use of automated external defibrillators (AED) to deal with cardiac arrest, and the Heimlich maneuver to deal with airway foreign body obstruction. These skills can really snatch people away from death. Currently, the survival rate of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in my country is less than 1%. The big reason is that the first witness cannot perform CPR. No one starts to perform compressions within the golden 4 minutes. When the ambulance arrives, the best rescue time is basically missed. If someone presses the button immediately and cooperates with AED defibrillation, the survival rate can be increased to more than 30%. There is also a pressure bandaging method for bleeding limbs. Take a clean gauze or towel and press it hard on the bleeding point. Most ordinary bleeding can be stopped. It is easy to use and you will be able to do it after practicing it once.

We don’t usually encounter such emergencies, and the treatment of common minor injuries also falls into the category of basic first aid, such as rinsing off the foam cover for burns and scalds, raising cold compresses for sprains, showering with soapy water after scratches and bites by cats and dogs, moving to a cool place to rehydrate for heatstroke, and stuffing candy with low blood sugar. These are seemingly trivial but practical skills that many people easily fall into. For example, applying toothpaste and soy sauce to burns and scalds, twisting the foot and rubbing hard to disperse blood stasis will aggravate the injury.

Oh, by the way, there are some operations that the academic circles still have different opinions on, such as the use of tourniquets. One school of thought believes that ordinary people do not need to distinguish the type of bleeding. As long as the amount of bleeding in the limbs is large, they can directly apply a tourniquet. The operation threshold is low and the hemorrhage can be stopped quickly.； The other school of thought believes that most venous bleeding can be stopped by pressure bandaging. It is difficult for ordinary users to control the bandaging position and loosening time of the tourniquet. On the contrary, it may easily cause ischemia and necrosis of the limbs. It is only recommended when there is spurting arterial bleeding and pressure cannot stop the bleeding. For us ordinary people to learn, it is enough to give priority to practicing the pressure bandage. If you encounter extreme situations that require the use of a tourniquet, remember to mark the bandage time clearly and loosen it for 1-2 minutes every 40 minutes or so to avoid limb necrosis.

To be honest, don’t think that these skills are useless. When I was out for marathon insurance, I met a young man who suddenly fainted and had a cardiac arrest while running a half-marathon. The runner next to him happened to have learned CPR. He regained consciousness in less than two minutes and was basically stable by the time the ambulance arrived. If someone else who knew nothing was standing next to him and could only wait, the result might be completely different.