this morning i went to east coast park with two of my pe friends to help out in a competitive run organised by the ministry. my role was as a time-keeper. speaking of which, i will be running 21 km tomorrow morning. although i am in the men's open competitive category, but i am definitely not running competitively. i just hope to complete the run in less than 2 hours 10 minutes. the last time i ran 21 km was in 2003, which was 6 years ago! wow.
anyway, once we finished our duties in helping out, we went to eat breakfast at the bedok interchange hawker centre. we started talking cock, and dunno how we reached the topic of outdoor camps.
one of the pe friends is already a teacher, let us call him CH, and he is two years my senior. so he was sharing with us his experience. he and his batch of pe classmates went to mount ophir for their camp. on the last day of the camp, a big tree got rooted from the ground as a result of the strong wind, and fell on one of the tents, crushing one of the trainee's head, and he died.
during that time, CH's tent was actually pitched straight in front of that tree. the tree fell diagonally and landed on the victim's tent. inside the tent, there were 3 trainees, and the victim happened to be sleeping in the middle, and the tree fell directly on him, so the other two trainees escaped unscathed.
at that time, the weather was very bad. it was 4 plus am. raining heavily. strong winds howling. immediately everyone got up and they removed the tree trunk away. CH happened to be a saf medic, and there were two more trainees in his group were also medics. so they quickly applied CPR on the victim.
the victim still remained unconscious. they decided to evacuate him to the foot of the mountain. but the thing is there was no proper medical evacuation route. there was no heli evacuation. there was no stretcher. therefore CH and the rest of the trainees have to build a makeshift stretcher, and all of them take turns to stretcher him down the mountain. the victim's weight was 90 kg. on the way down the mountain, they keep applying CPR on the victim. 4 hours later, they finally reached the foot of the mountain. and the victim was dead.
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after that incident, there were no more overseas camps for the future pe trainees.
so the purpose of writing the above incident is to let everyone know the importance of first aid. the first few minutes in a life-threatening situation are vital. how you respond to the emergency is extremely important in helping the victim to recover and in preventing permanent disability. i attended a first aid course in march, but i am guilty enough to admit that i forgot 50 percent of what i had learnt.
upon hearing CH's story, i feel ashamed. i am in deep admiration of his readiness and situation awareness in applying CPR to the victim when the tragedy occurred. but let's say if i am with a class of students, and something tragedic happens (touch wood), will i be able to react accordingly and applied whatever i learnt to save a person's life?
therefore i am now reading my first aid handbook that was given to me during the first aid course. i need to brush up my knowledge on first aid. who knows next time when something happened, and i am the only certified first aider around, and it is up to me to save a person's life.
so right now, i am going to share with everyone on what is CPR.
CPR stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.
Cardio refers to he heart and pumonary refers to the lungs.
CPR is the process of circulating oxygenated blood to the brain, heart and other vital organs of a person who is unable to perform this for himself. Without this oxygenated blood a person will die.
CPR involves blowing air into a person's lungs by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to get oxygen to the brain, and pushing on their chest to pump their heart to maintain circulation.
You can only perform CPR on someone who has had a cardiac arrest.
A person who has had a cardiac arrest will be:
- Unconscious and showing no signs of life
- Not breathing
WHAT TO DO DURING CPR:
1. Check for Dangers
- Find out if scene is safe
- What happened?
- How many casualties?
- Anyone who can help
- Identify yourself as a first aider, "I am a first aider, I am here to help".
2. Check responsiveness.
- Tap his shoulder. "HELLO! HELLO! Are you OK?"
- If no response, give a trapezius squeeze
- Still no response, shout to someone, "YOU! Call 995 and get back to me!"
3. Check airway
- Check neck for injury
- If no neck injury, do a head tilt chin lift
- Check mouth for obstrution
4. Assess breathing by putting your ear above his nose/mouth region
- If no breathing, give 2 blows, each blow lasting one second
5. Check for pulse. If no pulse, start CPR
- locate ribs cage with index and middle finger
- run the two fingers until the tip of sternum
- place the heel of the other hand next to the index finger
- interlock your hands
- compress 30 compressions, follwed by 2 blows
(count: 1&2&3&4&5&1&2&3&4&10&1&2&3&4&15 ... all the way
until 1&2&3&4&30!)
- repeat for 5 cycles
6. Check pulse. If pulse present, check for breathing. If pulse not present, perform CPR again.
7. Assess breathing. If no breathing, perform RESCUE BREATHING.
- Blow; count 2 a-thousand, 3 a-thousand, 4 a-thousand, 5 a-thousand; Blow
(do this for 12 times)
8. Check pulse. If pulse present, check breathing.
9. Check breathing, if breathing present, conduct a rapid body survey.
10. Conduct rapid body survey.
11. If no visible injury, place victim into recovery position.
12. Monitor vital signs.
13. Reassure victims at all times.
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These are the conditions in which a first aider may stop CPR:
- victim regains pulse and breathing
- you are replaced by another trained rescuer or paramedic
- a physician tells you to stop
- you are too exhausted to continue
- the scene becomes unsafe for you to continue
