Can you help save a life

[oya]

I guess the lesson there is that if a doctor found a refresher helpful none of us should ever take the easy way to a CPR card no matter how many times we've taken the course (such as signing one another off). Knowing you are prepared to handle such emergencies to the best of your abilities may also make it easier to come to terms with death when one's best efforts don't result in a life saved.

Three points that I repeat over and over when I teach:

1) Ideally these are skills you will never ever use... but skills you should practice even more often than the 2 year certification period, because like all skills they fade fast and if you should need them, you'll need them.

2) If you're called on to use these skills, you're not capable of making the situation worse. So try. Do your best. Even in the likely chance it doesn't work you did SOMETHING.

3) Talk to someone. Because even if it works, having to do it messes with your head.

[Brent]

Three points that I repeat over and over when I teach:

1) Ideally these are skills you will never ever use... but skills you should practice even more often than the 2 year certification period, because like all skills they fade fast and if you should need them, you'll need them.

2) If you're called on to use these skills, you're not capable of making the situation worse. So try. Do your best. Even in the likely chance it doesn't work you did SOMETHING.

3) Talk to someone. Because even if it works, having to do it messes with your head.

Paragraph #2 pretty much sums it up. Give it your best shot. It will be better than just standing by and doing nothing!

[TotDoc]

Well said, Oya. I tend to feel that CPR training is just a good thing for people to have, period. People who take on a sport that involves high physical activity out in remote areas without rapid access to EMS, though, should really consider the possibility that CPR could be a life saving skill. Most of the saves from CPR are not from drowning incidents, after all!

Around 350,000 people a year are victim to sudden cardiac arrest outside a hospital.

Compressions only CPR is effective about 10% of the time. Which seems like a low number, but...

That's 35,000 people. 35,000 people's families, loved ones, friends, and pets who are all positively impacted by the efforts of someone who is trained and practiced in CPR.

I teach a LOT of CPR classes and I absolutely feel that everyone should be current.

Whether it is going to help someone who has a problem 3000 feet back in a cave or not... obviously questionable. But someone who collapses walking a set of double 108s to waters edge...?

Heart disease is the number one cause of death in the country which, by statistical extension, makes it the number one cause of death among cave divers. And aren't we supposed to be the ones who are most prepared? Most safety conscious?

Rock on, Al. Good call taking the course! Just remember "Staying Alive" is the perfect rhythm for 120BPM. (As is "Another One Bites the Dust," but I imagine which to sing depends on whether your personal glass is half empty or full.)

[MORGAN]

Three points that I repeat over and over when I teach:

1) Ideally these are skills you will never ever use... but skills you should practice even more often than the 2 year certification period, because like all skills they fade fast and if you should need them, you'll need them.

2) If you're called on to use these skills, you're not capable of making the situation worse. So try. Do your best. Even in the likely chance it doesn't work you did SOMETHING.

3) Talk to someone. Because even if it works, having to do it messes with your head.

Yup, these are all good points.

1) Yes - the skills are perishable. I'm involved in resuscitation situations several times a month, but still required to go to the Simulation Lab quarterly and run scenarios under the supervision of the fiendishly inventive medical school sim staff. If you have your basics nailed down tight it frees up your mind to be working on other aspects of the problem while you run the resuscitation.

2) Yes - if someone's in arrest, you're not going to make them worse. Do what you can. In my 911 paramedic days we would often arrive on scene to find several people standing around a patient in cardiac arrest. My favorites were the guy who told me that he was trained in CPR but hadn't started it because his card had expired, and the several occasions where an arrest patient was being fanned with a magazine. Research has not shown that fanning the patient's face with a newspaper or magazine is effective for either ventilation or oxygenation.

3) Yup. Those of us who do this stuff for a living tend to have pretty well developed coping mechanisms, which include trusted people who "get it" that we can vent to. Still, there's a certain amount of wear and tear on the soul. And it's different doing it as a member of a team at work than it is on a friend, family member, or dive buddy. If I had to do CPR on someone I was close to I'm pretty sure I'd be just as torn up as if it was my first time.

Al, thanks for starting this thread.

Mike

[tstormdiver]

Paragraph #2 pretty much sums it up. Give it your best shot. It will be better than just standing by and doing nothing!

I tell my 1st Aid/ CPR/ O2/ AED students that typically doing something is better than doing nothing. Many times it can be a judgement call (scene assessment, what may have happened (if you are not a direct witness)).

[shellmoundal]

"Being a cave diver I feel it should be a requirement for us to be able to perform CPR". Interesting.

Please put this into a logical example so I can understand your stance on how "being able to perform" would help or have helped....

This, I gotta hear.

Bob

May be I may need to make this simple. I was not saying that we need to administer CPR in the water. I was stating that if anyone on a dive site needed CPR then I would feel terrible if I did not have the training that may have saved a life.
CPR would not have helped either of the divers at Gennie last weekend but it brought to my attention that not having first aid training would be a detriment.

[shellmoundal]

I just received an Email from Nancy Patillo, she will be the instructor for the CPR Training. She will need a count for the people who want to sign up for the training on Saturday at the CDS Workshop. That will be a one hour class , non certified. Also for those who need their certification updated or those who desire to be certified , there will be a 4 hour class offered on Sunday. The cost for Friends and Family is $20.00. The cost for the Sunday Certified Class is $65.00.
You can PM me for any questions or sign up.

[Six Feet Under]

I've had CPR training, basic first aid, more extensive training in GSW/blast trauma and penetrating injuries, and a good amount of practice doing most of the above on live patients (most recent one I treated was a guy with three 7.62mm GSWs to the chest and back he got during a drive-by, he lived and was out of the hospital within a week or so). Haven't had anything happen that was scuba-related, but those experiences will help when/if something DOES happen to another diver. I plan on taking a rescue diver course and additional diving-specific training.


Having the training or knowing the steps necessary to give someone CPR, administer oxygen, etc. is pretty much worthless unless you practice it. At the very least, mental rehearsal is a wonderful thing. Visualizing each step you would need to take to treat someone will help when the clock is ticking. I've found that explaining the process to other people (say for treating a gunshot wound, what I would use and how I would do it, and in what order) also helps me retain that information and make it muscle memory.

Another personal experience - I got shot about seven years ago; the bullet shattered my right distal humerus and although there wasn't much blood loss (didn't require a transfusion at all), I had a big bag of first aid supplies that was maybe twenty feet from where I got shot.


Never even had a clue they were there until I got home from the hospital and thought of the stuff being nearby when that happened. Just because you have something (training, equipment, supplies), doesn't mean you'll remember how to do/use it (or that it's even there) when the SHTF.