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Pindara Private Hospital Magazine - Issue Nine

The first consideration in any emergency is that there is only one casualty; if you put yourself in a dangerous situation there very rapidly could be two victims! Check that there is no threat to your own safety before acting. Secondly, we all get sleepy from time to time so it is worth checking that your patient is actually unconscious and not just ‘taking a nap’. Shout at them and give them a reasonable shake to see if they are responding. If they are unresponsive you will need to get yourself some help. Call out to raise the alarm and/or call an ambulance. When it comes to cardiac arrest in an adult the key principle is that the biggest group of survivors have an unstable heart rhythm, which requires electricity to be passed through the heart in order for it to be corrected. The piece of equipment required to do this is called a defibrillator. If you don’t have one, you will need someone to bring one to you quickly – this is why calling for help is a priority. These days AEDs, or automated external defibrillators, are situated in airports, shopping centres, sports grounds and surf clubs. Keep an eye out for them, as they can save a life. The next thing you need to do is to establish whether your ‘patient’ is breathing. You can listen for breathing, look for the chest moving and feel for breath on your cheek or back of your hand. There are techniques that can be used to open an airway that involve gently tilting the head back and pulling the jaw forward. Just imagine you are the Queen of England, leaning forward to take a sip of hot tea from a fine china teacup! These maneuvres usually require some training and no one really enjoys the thought of doing mouth-to-mouth, particularly on strangers. In the case of adult cardiac arrest, actual ‘breathing’ for the patient doesn't seem to make that much difference to outcomes where as performing cardiac compressions does. The decision was made that if people couldn't or didn't want to do mouth-to-mouth then they should just do cardiac compressions alone - hence ‘hands-only CPR’. Another important observation was that even trained professionals were not very good at finding a pulse. The ‘pulse check’ was thought to be unreliable and therefore a waste of time. STEP BY STEP CPR 14 Pindara Magazine 2016


Pindara Private Hospital Magazine - Issue Nine
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