Mags GarganLearning first aid can mean the difference between life and death for someone in an emergency situation, writes Mags Gargan
Emergencies happen all around us, in all areas of life. Someone could fall, cut themselves or have a heart attack at work, school or at home. When this happens, the first few minutes are the most crucial and having basic first aid skills means you can stop the situation from getting worse or could even be the difference between life and death for a loved one.
Whether you are a parent, a teacher, a sports coach, a community group leader or a just someone who wants to know how to help, taking a first aid training course gives you the ability to keep yourself and those around you safe.
First aid is a broad subject that deals with a number of emergency situations such as bleeding, drowning and burns. There are numerous courses on offer across the country and most of them are designed to cover basic techniques: making an initial assessment of a victim, how to detect an emergency, how to protect yourself from any infections, effective control of bleeding wounds, dealing with broken bones, head and neck injuries, strokes, heart attacks and choking.
“When I was about 21 my dad started choking in the kitchen and I was able to do the Heimlich maneuver, so I got good value out of the first course that I tried,” says Scott Keenan, a fire officer in Limerick and a volunteer with the Irish Red Cross.
Scott started first aid in his Leaving Cert year, when a friend in the Irish Red Cross suggested it, which in led him to train as an emergency medical technician and to get involved in emergency first aid training for the Red Cross.
“It was a very practical course.The instructors were really friendly and I realised it was a useful skill to have,” he says. “When you put that together with how to make a proper ambulance call and seek help from professionals on time, you can save someone’s life.”
In some ways you could say the most important lesson is when to call emergency services and how to describe the emergency to the operator. The more details they have, the better prepared the ambulance team is on arrival at the scene. For example, a description of the victim’s wounds, their ability to respond and the extent of damage.
“Sometimes people think someone else is making the call,” Scott says. “And with the best will in world, people tend to panic, but a basic first aid course gives someone the confidence to make a life-saving intervention.”
The Irish Red Cross offers training programmes for children as young as five and knowing how to make a 999 call is one of the first steps.
“In the teddy bear programme the key thing they learn is how to make a emergency call and first aid is a great skill for someone at any age. We have volunteer cadets and novices from 12 years upwards and youth development for 16 years upwards. It gives them a chance to make friends, to learn a useful skill and it can also give them an idea of what they might do as a career. Lots of members have gone forward into nursing, medicine and physiotherapy,” Scott says.
“First aid is a good hobby for people to meet others and for those who want to give back to the community. First aiders are great enablers and lots of public events like sport or music can only happen because organisations like the Red Cross are there to keep people safe.”
It is estimated that 5,000 people die from sudden cardiac arrest in Ireland every year and 70% of these happen out of hospital, usually at home, so knowing CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) can save a loved one’s life.
“If you start CPR immediately you double the chances of survival for every minute without CPR,” says Brigid Sinnott, the Basic Life Support Co-Ordinator of the Irish Heart Foundation.
“The National Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Register in 2013 showed that 122 people went home to families following an out of hospital cardiac arrest and the majority of them were attended to by a bystander initially.”
In these situations, the most important thing to understand is that you cannot harm the person by trying to resuscitate them. “If you don’t know how to do the breaths, get in and do compressions, you are not going to do any harm,” Brigid says, as the person is already in a critical condition.
The Irish Heart Foundation offers a number of training courses in resuscitation and how to use a portable defibrillator (AED), and Brigid has seen the number of people taking up the training double in recent years.
“More and more community groups are ringing up for training and linking in to community responder schemes. These groups are really going to make a difference if they start compressing or arrive with an AED and administer a shock in the period of time before the ambulance arrives,” she says.
Recognition of stroke and choking are the other two main emergency situations that can crop up in daily life and where first aid intervention is a matter of life and death.
“Recognition of stroke is getting a lot of publicity and it really is something easy to identity,” says George Robinson of the Order of Malta. “Again time is hugely critical. The sooner you get to hospital, the better the chances of you making a full recovery.
“Choking is also quite a simple manoeuvre and yet at same time not a lot of people know it,” he says.
While the Order of Malta ambulance teams are out every week administering first aid and saving lives, George says they also have many examples of people who took their first aid courses making emergency interventions. “We have stories from people coming back for refresher courses where parents tell us they managed to resuscitate children or young cadets helped grandparents having a stoke. Age is no barrier to first aid and once you have those skills and know what you are looking for, you can prevent the condition from worsening,” George says.
Order of Malta Ireland currently has a membership of 4,000 volunteers across 81 local communities North and South of the border, including cadets (10-16 years). It offers a range of course options for anyone interested in gaining life-saving skills, from Transition Year students to community groups and health care workers.
Instructors
“Our instructors don’t just teach first aid – they practice it. Each one of our courses is delivered by professionally qualified and experienced instructors who have years of practice in administering first aid and life-saving techniques to people in need,” George says.
“It’s also important not to forget and get rusty on the basics once you’ve done a good course. With competent instruction you will retain the basics, and people are amazed how quickly it comes back. But for people doing it more frequently it comes quicker and more naturally, so we always recommend people to take a refresher every two years.”
For more information on first aid courses near you check www.irishheart.ie or www.orderofmaltaireland.org or www.redcross.ie