Week 2

This week we had our PE lesson by the old university, Hibu. We were firstly, divided into groups of four. Two people from each group were to be victims (fake) of falling of a tree while climbing it. One victim had to pretend to have fainted and the other had a stick stuck into their hand and was bleeding from that wound.

   The others in the group were handed a first aid kit (I was of those who were given a kit, I wasn't a victim) with some basic things such as bandages, tapes and fluid absorbent material. Next, we (the one's who weren't hurt) had to find the victims in our group in the forest area and decide what to do to help them. We were not told their situation, so this was our challenge, to figure out what to do to the victim. The victim I looked at was Cora.  By the looks, it seemed that she had fainted by falling down from the tree (we were told that hey had fallen down from a tree, but not what happened to them after that).
   I had  no idea what had happened to her, and what to check when someone had fainted, or I could at least not remember what to do. I forgot to check if she was breathing or not, because at the end, when our times were up to do something, I hadn't woken her up yet.

Later we were told what we should have done. We were introduced to the 'ABCs of first aid': Airway, Breathing, Circulation. To make sure the victim's ABCs are working normally,

1. tilt the victim's head backwards and lift up chin for proper airway

"Checking respiration2" by Image by Rama, (Wikipedia, 2015)

2. first place one hand on the victim's chest and lean your ear towards their nose to check for breathing signs

(Wikipedia, 2015)

3. Perform chest compressions if victim is not breathing normally (CPR)

(Wikipedia, 2015)

I remember learning about the first two steps before but forgot to apply them on the situation I had faced, where the victim fainted.

And what should and shouldn't have been done to the person with a stick in their arm was to importantly, not remove the stick, but cover the wound, with the stick still in the arm, with a bandage. It is important not to remove the stick, as, if the stick has ruptured a vein, it is blocking the blood from coming out more, from the part where the vein was ruptured. This was one thing I knew from before.

Another thing that was taught, but I knew from before was if you ever face a situation were a person has fainted and the other is bleeding, then you must/should always attend (help) the person who has fainted first. This is because the person that has fainted, might have stopped breathing which is very serious.

Goal and plan for this unit

My goal for this unit is to be able to think and act fast if I face a victim needing first aid. I should be better at finding out what the problem is how to prevent the situation to become more serious. 

My plan for doing this is to first of all practice handling such cases (like we did in this week's lesson). Then  I should learn some basic first aid techniques and what problem they are associated with. To learn this better I should also learn how these techniques work.

References

Wikipedia, (2015). ABC (medicine). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(medicine)#/media/File:Checking_respiration2.jpg [Accessed 30 Aug. 2015].

Wikipedia, (2015). ABC (medicine). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(medicine)#/media/File:Checking_respiration.png [Accessed 30 Aug. 2015].

Wikipedia, (2015). ABC (medicine). [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_(medicine)#/media/File:CPR-positionning.jpg [Accessed 30 Aug. 2015].