Another course done and dusted
I haven’t long got back from the resus course and I have to say I found it really interesting and worthwhile. Last night (and this morning) I was really apprehensive about going because I doubted I’d be able to do it, it’s such a big course and covers a lot of ground and there were going to be quite a few people there who had already done the course, but were updating their certificate. But I did go, and I’m glad I did.
A lot of the morning was based around CPR and additional equiptment we can use. This introduced us to the BVM (bag, valve, mask) which assists when it comes to breathing, so instead of giving mouth to mouth we ‘bag them’ and have the option of attaching oxygen to the valve. A little biology lesson now… when we breath in normal air we breath in 21% oxygen and breath out 16%, so we only use 5% of it… so when we give mouth to mouth we are breathing our exhaled air into the other persons lungs so that’s only 16%. If oxygen is used when giving CPR if used properly can provide 100% which is really helpful when it comes to CPR and attempting to keep the body going.
We were told about LUCAS, a machanical machine that does the chest compressions for ya (and while it’s at it am sure it breaks every single rib! Look at it!) We don’t use this, but some NHS ambulance services do.
In the afternoon we learnt about oxygen therapy, giving oxygen to casualties who are basically having trouble breathing for whatever reason and how to establish an airway by sticking something down the casualties throat! Oh, and suction… one of the trainers volunteered to allow people to use suction in his mouth and I used the suction machine on him and it was pretty daunting.
Then we learnt about monitoring equiptment such as pulse oximeter which measures the oxygen saturation in the blood and also the pulse rate. Well my pulse was 110 but my oxygen saturation was 99% which was good… then we were introduced to the blood pressure monitor and my BP was 159/96 which is really high! Normal should be around 120/80.
Anyway it was an interesting course and got to play with some new toys, also one step further to getting on the ambulances! I think I need two more courses before taking the IHCD exam and hopefully I’ll be on the ambulances by April. Woot!! I know it’s not the NHS but the Red Cross do follow the NHS and their aim is to qualify ambulance crew to a level similar to that of the NHS so that if there’s a casualty needing proper care they don’t need to wait until the NHS ambulance gets there to recieve good care, there can be more to first aid than plasters and bandages.