(no subject)

[some_stars]

I have completed the online reading-and-test portion of my first aid/CPR course! This afternoon I go in to the Red Cross office for four hours, presumably to get intimate with some CPR dummies. This thing with the Red Cross offering courses partly online is fantastic, because spending four hours in a class is fine but all day would be awful and I'd never get around to it. But I actually enjoyed doing the online course, because there's just so much information (and a lot of it has changed since I was a kid--especially the stuff about bleeding--and needless to say it is all very different from TV) and it's all important and therefore interesting. You do get a few horrible photos in the section on Soft Tissue Injuries, ie cuts and burns. I mean, I totally understand why, one should be able to recognize them, but...auuugh nonetheless.

Anyway: awesome experience so far, highly recommended.

Comments

[vass]

I did the two full day course a few years ago. I was the sort of student everyone hates.

Instructor: "Name a serious injury."
Me: "Decapitation!"
Instructor: "Name a survivable serious injury."
Me: "Degloving!"
Instructor: *enthusiastic gleam* "Now you're talking!" And then he explained it for everyone who didn't know already.

Edited to add: I bet the differences between US and Australian first aid are interesting. You guys probably do a lot more on hypothermia, whereas we do a lot on heatstroke and bushfire survival and venomous reptiles and spiders and jellyfish.

(Instructor: "A folk remedy for jellyfish sting is to rinse the affected area in urine. St John Ambulance does not recommend this.
Student: "But does it work?"
Instructor: "St John Ambulance does not recommend it.

[some_stars]

AUGH DEGLOVING. The worst injury with the worst name.

Yeah, there were snakebites but no other specific animals/creatures mentioned, I expect primarily because there's so much dangerously wrong myths about first aid for snakebites. It wasn't that extensive, on the whole--I went through the entire thing in about six hours; it was basically CPR & defibrillators, rescue breathing, not moving people, how to move someone if you absolutely have to, serious bleeding and burns, and DON'T RUB FROSTBITE. Or suck on snakebites. Or hold down people with seizures, or induce vomiting without being told to, or do abdominal thrusts on someone who can breathe (or someone who's telling you no), or attempt to realign broken bones, or use tourniquets ever, or otherwise make everything worse.

[vass]

Yeah, so much of first aid is about not making it worse.

Fun fact about the snakebites: Australian and US snakes have different bites. US snakes bite intravenously, and Aussie snakes bite intramuscularly. So in Australia, snakebite first aid consists of knowing how to apply a normal compression immobilisation bandage (not a tourniquet) and calming the patient down and keeping them still until help comes. Survival rate is very high if you do that. But (if I recall correctly) it wouldn't work for US snakes, because your snakebites hit the bloodstream too fast, and I have no idea what actually does work.

[neigedens]

That is both horrifying and v. interesting. My favorite kind of factoid!