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I'm writing this as a bit of a basic guide to CPR, as well, you never know when you might need it ladeda. I'm not a professional, but I can tell you the basics.
I guess it's a good idea to start with what CPR actually is. It stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, and I think one of the most important things to remember is you're very, very unlikely to revive someone doing it.
So ignore what you see on tv when people perform CPR and the person suddenly starts coughing or their vitals come back. It hardly ever happens, so I thought it's a good idea to warn you about that, and explain why you should bother doing it at all.
As I said, the idea is not to revive the patient. Instead, the reason you perform CPR is to provide the body with oxygenated blood. Without oxygen, tissue will die quickly, and the real fear is of there being no oxygen to the brain, which results in becoming 'braindead' when the tissue dies. As long as you can keep oxygenated blood pumping through the body, the person is not 'dead'.
There's only a very small amount of oxygen in your breath, but basically, it's the best chance you've got as a person.
A word of warning and this hopefully is a bit obvious, do NOT practise this on someone who's breathing normally and their heart is beating. You actually have a chance of causing cardiac arrest on the person by doing so, by disrupting the rhythm of the heart.
Also, the method which I'm talking about is pretty new, as it's been revamped in the last few years. If you were taught how to perform CPR a few years ago you may find that what I'm saying here is different.
I'll mention this again, but instead of starting with breaths, or checking a pulse, you now start with chest compressions, and ignore taking a pulse at all as it wastes time.
Without further ado, here we go.
-------------------
Ok, imagine you've walked down a street, or into a room, and you find someone collapsed on the floor.
The first thing you need to remember is a word called DRAB. This can also be DRAB C but DRAB should be easy enough to remember.
It stands for:
D - Danger
R - Response
A - Airway
B - Breathing
To explain:
Danger - The first thing before doing anything is to check around the person to make sure that they are out of danger. Whilst you shouldn't move them unless absolutely necessary, you'll have to make your own judgement on this. The obvious example is if they'd been electrocuted, if so, get something to stand on like a telephone directory that can insulate you (non-conductive), then move them away from the electricity with something else non-conductive like a wooden broom handle. Another simple thing to watch for is if they'd slipped over on water or something. You could easily rush to the body to help, and find yourself slipping over too.
So remember basically, make sure that the casualty is out of danger, and don't put yourself in danger either. You'll be no help if you rush in quick and end up falling and incapacitating yourself.
Response - When you think it's safe to go in, kneel down to the person and try to see if you can get a response from them. Put your hands on their shoulders, shake them a little, call their name if you know it, or ask 'Hello? Can you hear me?' or something like that. Be loud, make sure you can wake them. If there's a response, naturally, talk to them, make sure they're ok. Use your common sense to decide if they need an ambulance or not, I'm trying to keep this as brief as possible so I won't go into detail about that here.
Airway - If there's no response, first make sure their airway is open. How do you do that, you ask? Well, put your hand on their forehead and tilt the head backwards, to stretch out the neck. You're not generally advised to check inside the mouth to see if there's anything blocking it, but if you can see something just in their mouth that's NOT deep down and you're sure you can reach it, take it out. The problem is that you may 1) damage the throat by trying to take something out or 2) push it down further and cause a blockage. As said, if you are sure you can easily remove it, do so. Time really counts here, so don't think about making a mistake too much.
Breathing - Ok, now you need to check if they're breathing or not. With their airway open, bring your face and cheek down to their mouth. Place your ear close to the mouth and nose, with your face facing their chest, and listen.
You're checking for three things:
1) Can you hear them breathing?
2) Can you feel their breath on your ear and cheek?
3) Is their chest rising and falling? Watch whilst you listen.
Spend ten seconds doing this. If they're not breathing, this is where it becomes serious.
Call an ambulance, now. If you have someone with you, send them. Tell them they're not breathing, any information you know. There's two reasons why you call an ambulance now:
1) You're about to start CPR. Once you start, you can't stop.
2) As mentioned, you're not going to restart their heart on your own. That's what a defibrillator is for. Remember, your job is to pump oxygenated blood around the body and stop their organs from dying.
Some of you may think "what about checking their pulse?" Well, if someone's not breathing, you need to start CPR right away. It's been decided it's a waste of time to check the pulse too, so you need to get going immediately. All you should do is check if they're breathing.
With someone gone to call the ambulance, you're now about to start CPR.
C - Compressions. Remove any thick clothing so you can access the body easier. There's a lot of controversy over this.. as in, can you rip off a woman's clothing etc to help them, or should you not? Basically we're taught to just make sure we can reach them ok, so thick clothes get off, and keep to thin materials.
I know some people will be thinking here "why don't you give breaths first? That's what you used to do!". Well stick with me, I'll talk about that at the end. It's been decided you start with compressions, so follow what I say here.
With the body lying on it's back, feel your hand up the bottom of the ribcage. In fact, do this now to yourself.
Feel on your body one side of the bottom of your ribcage. Now follow it up with your fingers until they meet at the middle of your chest, just below the line between your nipples.
At this point is a very weak part of the ribcage. There's a tiny bone here where the ribs meet in the middle, so you need to avoid this bit to stop it from breaking off with compressions.
Imagine you are kneeling down next to a body, and you've felt up the ribcage to the point in the middle. Now, you would place two fingers over the weak bone of the ribcage, and keep your hand there. If you were at the casualty's left side, you would use your right hand, and at the right side, your left. Use common sense.
Then, with your two fingers placed over the weak part to protect it, slide your other hand down their chest from their neck to meet the fingers. Hopefully now, with your hands together, you'll be at the best place to perform chest compressions, without damaging the tiny bone. If you're still confused over this, please say so, and I'll update this topic with pictures.
With your other hand now placed away from the small bone, bring the hand that was protecting it to join your other hand. Place one hand over each other and keep your hands together with your fingers locked. Don't bend your fingers, keep them out-stretched, because of fingernails. Now starts the hard bit.
Push down onto the ribcage 30 times. You need to push the heart to pump blood around the body, and to do this, you'll need to press down about 1/3rd of the chest. Push hard and don't be afraid to damage them. I'm sure they'd rather had a broken rib than end up dead. You need to keep this at a speed of about 100 compressions a minute so put some effort into it. It's very, very difficult to do, but you need to try your best. Keep your arms straight to help you press down, and try to use the weight of your body to help. You might be doing this for a long time, so judge yourself to make sure you can do as much as you can for as long as you can.
Once you have completed 30 compressions, you need to try and get oxygen into their body. Remember how you don't give breaths first? Well, it was decided that after someone collapses, hopefully they'll have enough oxygen in their blood for it not to matter, and you need to start pumping it around their body before trying to get more oxygen into their system.
To perform mouth to mouth, first again tilt their head back with their forehead and open their airway by stretching their neck back. With their head tilted right backwards, pinch their nose to stop the air from escaping through it, then place your mouth over theirs, and breathe into it. Take a breath yourself, then breathe again.
You should only give 2 breaths. That should be sufficient to place oxygen into their body, and the most important thing is getting that oxygen pumped around them.
After the two breaths, return to chest compressions. Thirty again, followed by two breaths. Continue this cycle until the ambulance arrives.
Remember, all you can do is try your best. You can't say if the person is dead or not as long as you keep CPR going. Hopefully the ambulance will arrive soon, and restart their heart.
It's not always successful, but again, it's the best chance you've got. And remember, if you ever have to use this, we all make mistakes. Try and focus and keep to what I've said here, but if you mess up, don't pressurise yourself. Try and regain yourself and get back to doing it. All you can do is try your best.
-----------------
To recap:
Check for Danger - Check their Response - Open their Airway - Check for Breathing
If they are not breathing - Call an ambulance
Remove thick clothing - Avoid the small bone in the ribcage
Perform 30 Chest Compressions - a rate of 100 per minute - push down 1/3rd of the chest
Open the Airway - Perform 2 breaths
Repeat until ambulance arrives.
------------------
There's a few things you should know about children and about drowning.
With someone who has drowned, you do everything as normal, except instead of starting compressions straight away, give FIVE rescue breaths to begin with. This might start them breathing again. If this does not work, call an ambulance immediately and begin CPR as normal.
With children, you perform CPR as normal except, just like drowning, you give five rescue breaths first. Then continue with CPR as normal, a 1/3rd of their chest still applies.
The same with a baby, give five SHORT rescue breaths to the baby, but chest compressions are slightly different. You place two fingers between the baby's nipples in the middle, and push down 30 times as normal. Be careful not to breathe too hard. It was once said to give 'short puffs' but it was found out that they're not really that useful. Give short breaths, just don't over-do it.
If there are any questions I'll update the topic with the answers. Thanks for reading, I hope it helps.
I guess it's a good idea to start with what CPR actually is. It stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, and I think one of the most important things to remember is you're very, very unlikely to revive someone doing it.
So ignore what you see on tv when people perform CPR and the person suddenly starts coughing or their vitals come back. It hardly ever happens, so I thought it's a good idea to warn you about that, and explain why you should bother doing it at all.
As I said, the idea is not to revive the patient. Instead, the reason you perform CPR is to provide the body with oxygenated blood. Without oxygen, tissue will die quickly, and the real fear is of there being no oxygen to the brain, which results in becoming 'braindead' when the tissue dies. As long as you can keep oxygenated blood pumping through the body, the person is not 'dead'.
There's only a very small amount of oxygen in your breath, but basically, it's the best chance you've got as a person.
A word of warning and this hopefully is a bit obvious, do NOT practise this on someone who's breathing normally and their heart is beating. You actually have a chance of causing cardiac arrest on the person by doing so, by disrupting the rhythm of the heart.
Also, the method which I'm talking about is pretty new, as it's been revamped in the last few years. If you were taught how to perform CPR a few years ago you may find that what I'm saying here is different.
I'll mention this again, but instead of starting with breaths, or checking a pulse, you now start with chest compressions, and ignore taking a pulse at all as it wastes time.
Without further ado, here we go.
-------------------
Ok, imagine you've walked down a street, or into a room, and you find someone collapsed on the floor.
The first thing you need to remember is a word called DRAB. This can also be DRAB C but DRAB should be easy enough to remember.
It stands for:
D - Danger
R - Response
A - Airway
B - Breathing
To explain:
Danger - The first thing before doing anything is to check around the person to make sure that they are out of danger. Whilst you shouldn't move them unless absolutely necessary, you'll have to make your own judgement on this. The obvious example is if they'd been electrocuted, if so, get something to stand on like a telephone directory that can insulate you (non-conductive), then move them away from the electricity with something else non-conductive like a wooden broom handle. Another simple thing to watch for is if they'd slipped over on water or something. You could easily rush to the body to help, and find yourself slipping over too.
So remember basically, make sure that the casualty is out of danger, and don't put yourself in danger either. You'll be no help if you rush in quick and end up falling and incapacitating yourself.
Response - When you think it's safe to go in, kneel down to the person and try to see if you can get a response from them. Put your hands on their shoulders, shake them a little, call their name if you know it, or ask 'Hello? Can you hear me?' or something like that. Be loud, make sure you can wake them. If there's a response, naturally, talk to them, make sure they're ok. Use your common sense to decide if they need an ambulance or not, I'm trying to keep this as brief as possible so I won't go into detail about that here.
Airway - If there's no response, first make sure their airway is open. How do you do that, you ask? Well, put your hand on their forehead and tilt the head backwards, to stretch out the neck. You're not generally advised to check inside the mouth to see if there's anything blocking it, but if you can see something just in their mouth that's NOT deep down and you're sure you can reach it, take it out. The problem is that you may 1) damage the throat by trying to take something out or 2) push it down further and cause a blockage. As said, if you are sure you can easily remove it, do so. Time really counts here, so don't think about making a mistake too much.
Breathing - Ok, now you need to check if they're breathing or not. With their airway open, bring your face and cheek down to their mouth. Place your ear close to the mouth and nose, with your face facing their chest, and listen.
You're checking for three things:
1) Can you hear them breathing?
2) Can you feel their breath on your ear and cheek?
3) Is their chest rising and falling? Watch whilst you listen.
Spend ten seconds doing this. If they're not breathing, this is where it becomes serious.
Call an ambulance, now. If you have someone with you, send them. Tell them they're not breathing, any information you know. There's two reasons why you call an ambulance now:
1) You're about to start CPR. Once you start, you can't stop.
2) As mentioned, you're not going to restart their heart on your own. That's what a defibrillator is for. Remember, your job is to pump oxygenated blood around the body and stop their organs from dying.
Some of you may think "what about checking their pulse?" Well, if someone's not breathing, you need to start CPR right away. It's been decided it's a waste of time to check the pulse too, so you need to get going immediately. All you should do is check if they're breathing.
With someone gone to call the ambulance, you're now about to start CPR.
C - Compressions. Remove any thick clothing so you can access the body easier. There's a lot of controversy over this.. as in, can you rip off a woman's clothing etc to help them, or should you not? Basically we're taught to just make sure we can reach them ok, so thick clothes get off, and keep to thin materials.
I know some people will be thinking here "why don't you give breaths first? That's what you used to do!". Well stick with me, I'll talk about that at the end. It's been decided you start with compressions, so follow what I say here.
With the body lying on it's back, feel your hand up the bottom of the ribcage. In fact, do this now to yourself.
Feel on your body one side of the bottom of your ribcage. Now follow it up with your fingers until they meet at the middle of your chest, just below the line between your nipples.
At this point is a very weak part of the ribcage. There's a tiny bone here where the ribs meet in the middle, so you need to avoid this bit to stop it from breaking off with compressions.
Imagine you are kneeling down next to a body, and you've felt up the ribcage to the point in the middle. Now, you would place two fingers over the weak bone of the ribcage, and keep your hand there. If you were at the casualty's left side, you would use your right hand, and at the right side, your left. Use common sense.
Then, with your two fingers placed over the weak part to protect it, slide your other hand down their chest from their neck to meet the fingers. Hopefully now, with your hands together, you'll be at the best place to perform chest compressions, without damaging the tiny bone. If you're still confused over this, please say so, and I'll update this topic with pictures.
With your other hand now placed away from the small bone, bring the hand that was protecting it to join your other hand. Place one hand over each other and keep your hands together with your fingers locked. Don't bend your fingers, keep them out-stretched, because of fingernails. Now starts the hard bit.
Push down onto the ribcage 30 times. You need to push the heart to pump blood around the body, and to do this, you'll need to press down about 1/3rd of the chest. Push hard and don't be afraid to damage them. I'm sure they'd rather had a broken rib than end up dead. You need to keep this at a speed of about 100 compressions a minute so put some effort into it. It's very, very difficult to do, but you need to try your best. Keep your arms straight to help you press down, and try to use the weight of your body to help. You might be doing this for a long time, so judge yourself to make sure you can do as much as you can for as long as you can.
Once you have completed 30 compressions, you need to try and get oxygen into their body. Remember how you don't give breaths first? Well, it was decided that after someone collapses, hopefully they'll have enough oxygen in their blood for it not to matter, and you need to start pumping it around their body before trying to get more oxygen into their system.
To perform mouth to mouth, first again tilt their head back with their forehead and open their airway by stretching their neck back. With their head tilted right backwards, pinch their nose to stop the air from escaping through it, then place your mouth over theirs, and breathe into it. Take a breath yourself, then breathe again.
You should only give 2 breaths. That should be sufficient to place oxygen into their body, and the most important thing is getting that oxygen pumped around them.
After the two breaths, return to chest compressions. Thirty again, followed by two breaths. Continue this cycle until the ambulance arrives.
Remember, all you can do is try your best. You can't say if the person is dead or not as long as you keep CPR going. Hopefully the ambulance will arrive soon, and restart their heart.
It's not always successful, but again, it's the best chance you've got. And remember, if you ever have to use this, we all make mistakes. Try and focus and keep to what I've said here, but if you mess up, don't pressurise yourself. Try and regain yourself and get back to doing it. All you can do is try your best.
-----------------
To recap:
Check for Danger - Check their Response - Open their Airway - Check for Breathing
If they are not breathing - Call an ambulance
Remove thick clothing - Avoid the small bone in the ribcage
Perform 30 Chest Compressions - a rate of 100 per minute - push down 1/3rd of the chest
Open the Airway - Perform 2 breaths
Repeat until ambulance arrives.
------------------
There's a few things you should know about children and about drowning.
With someone who has drowned, you do everything as normal, except instead of starting compressions straight away, give FIVE rescue breaths to begin with. This might start them breathing again. If this does not work, call an ambulance immediately and begin CPR as normal.
With children, you perform CPR as normal except, just like drowning, you give five rescue breaths first. Then continue with CPR as normal, a 1/3rd of their chest still applies.
The same with a baby, give five SHORT rescue breaths to the baby, but chest compressions are slightly different. You place two fingers between the baby's nipples in the middle, and push down 30 times as normal. Be careful not to breathe too hard. It was once said to give 'short puffs' but it was found out that they're not really that useful. Give short breaths, just don't over-do it.
If there are any questions I'll update the topic with the answers. Thanks for reading, I hope it helps.
Great post Grix
Grix Thraves wrote:
> There's a few things you should know about children and about
> drowning.
>
> With someone who has drowned, you do everything as normal,
> except instead of starting compressions straight away, give
> FIVE rescue breaths to begin with. This might start them
> breathing again. If this does not work, call an ambulance
> immediately and begin CPR as normal.
>
> With children, you perform CPR as normal except, just like
> drowning, you give five rescue breaths first. Then continue with
> CPR as normal, a 1/3rd of their chest still applies.
>
> The same with a baby, give five SHORT rescue breaths to
> the baby, but chest compressions are slightly different. You
> place two fingers between the baby's nipples in the middle, and
> push down 30 times as normal. Be careful not to breathe too
> hard. It was once said to give 'short puffs' but it was found
> out that they're not really that useful. Give short breaths,
> just don't over-do it.
>
> If there are any questions I'll update the topic with the
> answers. Thanks for reading, I hope it helps.
This could come in very useful. Yesterday some lad fell in the river here. He was stood on the wall fishing, lost his balance and splash. Luckily where he fell wasnt to deep for him to get out. He was okies prob a few scratches here and there and a few tears.
Many lil kids go mess about n that wall, soon there is going to be something more serious. Parents let there kids out on their own from the age of about 4. They often walk the wall and mess about near the river.
Grix Thraves wrote:
> There's a few things you should know about children and about
> drowning.
>
> With someone who has drowned, you do everything as normal,
> except instead of starting compressions straight away, give
> FIVE rescue breaths to begin with. This might start them
> breathing again. If this does not work, call an ambulance
> immediately and begin CPR as normal.
>
> With children, you perform CPR as normal except, just like
> drowning, you give five rescue breaths first. Then continue with
> CPR as normal, a 1/3rd of their chest still applies.
>
> The same with a baby, give five SHORT rescue breaths to
> the baby, but chest compressions are slightly different. You
> place two fingers between the baby's nipples in the middle, and
> push down 30 times as normal. Be careful not to breathe too
> hard. It was once said to give 'short puffs' but it was found
> out that they're not really that useful. Give short breaths,
> just don't over-do it.
>
> If there are any questions I'll update the topic with the
> answers. Thanks for reading, I hope it helps.
This could come in very useful. Yesterday some lad fell in the river here. He was stood on the wall fishing, lost his balance and splash. Luckily where he fell wasnt to deep for him to get out. He was okies prob a few scratches here and there and a few tears.
Many lil kids go mess about n that wall, soon there is going to be something more serious. Parents let there kids out on their own from the age of about 4. They often walk the wall and mess about near the river.
Good point, they're pretty strong though, I thought it'd be common sense.. I'll update.
If it ok to miss a compression here and there to puff on a cigarette? And is it ok pop the cigarette into the casualty's ear to hold it there whilst giving mouth to mouth?
Other than that, if this post manages to save just one life then it was worth typing out, but you might want to add a little note about blowing air into a baby's lungs, because they're a little more delicate than those of an adult.
Other than that, if this post manages to save just one life then it was worth typing out, but you might want to add a little note about blowing air into a baby's lungs, because they're a little more delicate than those of an adult.
I'm willing to answer it but I may not update the topic with it
i have one question, but it revolves around your shame levels rather than cpr
I'm writing this as a bit of a basic guide to CPR, as well, you never know when you might need it ladeda. I'm not a professional, but I can tell you the basics.
I guess it's a good idea to start with what CPR actually is. It stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, and I think one of the most important things to remember is you're very, very unlikely to revive someone doing it.
So ignore what you see on tv when people perform CPR and the person suddenly starts coughing or their vitals come back. It hardly ever happens, so I thought it's a good idea to warn you about that, and explain why you should bother doing it at all.
As I said, the idea is not to revive the patient. Instead, the reason you perform CPR is to provide the body with oxygenated blood. Without oxygen, tissue will die quickly, and the real fear is of there being no oxygen to the brain, which results in becoming 'braindead' when the tissue dies. As long as you can keep oxygenated blood pumping through the body, the person is not 'dead'.
There's only a very small amount of oxygen in your breath, but basically, it's the best chance you've got as a person.
A word of warning and this hopefully is a bit obvious, do NOT practise this on someone who's breathing normally and their heart is beating. You actually have a chance of causing cardiac arrest on the person by doing so, by disrupting the rhythm of the heart.
Also, the method which I'm talking about is pretty new, as it's been revamped in the last few years. If you were taught how to perform CPR a few years ago you may find that what I'm saying here is different.
I'll mention this again, but instead of starting with breaths, or checking a pulse, you now start with chest compressions, and ignore taking a pulse at all as it wastes time.
Without further ado, here we go.
-------------------
Ok, imagine you've walked down a street, or into a room, and you find someone collapsed on the floor.
The first thing you need to remember is a word called DRAB. This can also be DRAB C but DRAB should be easy enough to remember.
It stands for:
D - Danger
R - Response
A - Airway
B - Breathing
To explain:
Danger - The first thing before doing anything is to check around the person to make sure that they are out of danger. Whilst you shouldn't move them unless absolutely necessary, you'll have to make your own judgement on this. The obvious example is if they'd been electrocuted, if so, get something to stand on like a telephone directory that can insulate you (non-conductive), then move them away from the electricity with something else non-conductive like a wooden broom handle. Another simple thing to watch for is if they'd slipped over on water or something. You could easily rush to the body to help, and find yourself slipping over too.
So remember basically, make sure that the casualty is out of danger, and don't put yourself in danger either. You'll be no help if you rush in quick and end up falling and incapacitating yourself.
Response - When you think it's safe to go in, kneel down to the person and try to see if you can get a response from them. Put your hands on their shoulders, shake them a little, call their name if you know it, or ask 'Hello? Can you hear me?' or something like that. Be loud, make sure you can wake them. If there's a response, naturally, talk to them, make sure they're ok. Use your common sense to decide if they need an ambulance or not, I'm trying to keep this as brief as possible so I won't go into detail about that here.
Airway - If there's no response, first make sure their airway is open. How do you do that, you ask? Well, put your hand on their forehead and tilt the head backwards, to stretch out the neck. You're not generally advised to check inside the mouth to see if there's anything blocking it, but if you can see something just in their mouth that's NOT deep down and you're sure you can reach it, take it out. The problem is that you may 1) damage the throat by trying to take something out or 2) push it down further and cause a blockage. As said, if you are sure you can easily remove it, do so. Time really counts here, so don't think about making a mistake too much.
Breathing - Ok, now you need to check if they're breathing or not. With their airway open, bring your face and cheek down to their mouth. Place your ear close to the mouth and nose, with your face facing their chest, and listen.
You're checking for three things:
1) Can you hear them breathing?
2) Can you feel their breath on your ear and cheek?
3) Is their chest rising and falling? Watch whilst you listen.
Spend ten seconds doing this. If they're not breathing, this is where it becomes serious.
Call an ambulance, now. If you have someone with you, send them. Tell them they're not breathing, any information you know. There's two reasons why you call an ambulance now:
1) You're about to start CPR. Once you start, you can't stop.
2) As mentioned, you're not going to restart their heart on your own. That's what a defibrillator is for. Remember, your job is to pump oxygenated blood around the body and stop their organs from dying.
Some of you may think "what about checking their pulse?" Well, if someone's not breathing, you need to start CPR right away. It's been decided it's a waste of time to check the pulse too, so you need to get going immediately. All you should do is check if they're breathing.
With someone gone to call the ambulance, you're now about to start CPR.
C - Compressions. Remove any thick clothing so you can access the body easier. There's a lot of controversy over this.. as in, can you rip off a woman's clothing etc to help them, or should you not? Basically we're taught to just make sure we can reach them ok, so thick clothes get off, and keep to thin materials.
I know some people will be thinking here "why don't you give breaths first? That's what you used to do!". Well stick with me, I'll talk about that at the end. It's been decided you start with compressions, so follow what I say here.
With the body lying on it's back, feel your hand up the bottom of the ribcage. In fact, do this now to yourself.
Feel on your body one side of the bottom of your ribcage. Now follow it up with your fingers until they meet at the middle of your chest, just below the line between your nipples.
At this point is a very weak part of the ribcage. There's a tiny bone here where the ribs meet in the middle, so you need to avoid this bit to stop it from breaking off with compressions.
Imagine you are kneeling down next to a body, and you've felt up the ribcage to the point in the middle. Now, you would place two fingers over the weak bone of the ribcage, and keep your hand there. If you were at the casualty's left side, you would use your right hand, and at the right side, your left. Use common sense.
Then, with your two fingers placed over the weak part to protect it, slide your other hand down their chest from their neck to meet the fingers. Hopefully now, with your hands together, you'll be at the best place to perform chest compressions, without damaging the tiny bone. If you're still confused over this, please say so, and I'll update this topic with pictures.
With your other hand now placed away from the small bone, bring the hand that was protecting it to join your other hand. Place one hand over each other and keep your hands together with your fingers locked. Don't bend your fingers, keep them out-stretched, because of fingernails. Now starts the hard bit.
Push down onto the ribcage 30 times. You need to push the heart to pump blood around the body, and to do this, you'll need to press down about 1/3rd of the chest. Push hard and don't be afraid to damage them. I'm sure they'd rather had a broken rib than end up dead. You need to keep this at a speed of about 100 compressions a minute so put some effort into it. It's very, very difficult to do, but you need to try your best. Keep your arms straight to help you press down, and try to use the weight of your body to help. You might be doing this for a long time, so judge yourself to make sure you can do as much as you can for as long as you can.
Once you have completed 30 compressions, you need to try and get oxygen into their body. Remember how you don't give breaths first? Well, it was decided that after someone collapses, hopefully they'll have enough oxygen in their blood for it not to matter, and you need to start pumping it around their body before trying to get more oxygen into their system.
To perform mouth to mouth, first again tilt their head back with their forehead and open their airway by stretching their neck back. With their head tilted right backwards, pinch their nose to stop the air from escaping through it, then place your mouth over theirs, and breathe into it. Take a breath yourself, then breathe again.
You should only give 2 breaths. That should be sufficient to place oxygen into their body, and the most important thing is getting that oxygen pumped around them.
After the two breaths, return to chest compressions. Thirty again, followed by two breaths. Continue this cycle until the ambulance arrives.
Remember, all you can do is try your best. You can't say if the person is dead or not as long as you keep CPR going. Hopefully the ambulance will arrive soon, and restart their heart.
It's not always successful, but again, it's the best chance you've got. And remember, if you ever have to use this, we all make mistakes. Try and focus and keep to what I've said here, but if you mess up, don't pressurise yourself. Try and regain yourself and get back to doing it. All you can do is try your best.
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To recap:
Check for Danger - Check their Response - Open their Airway - Check for Breathing
If they are not breathing - Call an ambulance
Remove thick clothing - Avoid the small bone in the ribcage
Perform 30 Chest Compressions - a rate of 100 per minute - push down 1/3rd of the chest
Open the Airway - Perform 2 breaths
Repeat until ambulance arrives.
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There's a few things you should know about children and about drowning.
With someone who has drowned, you do everything as normal, except instead of starting compressions straight away, give FIVE rescue breaths to begin with. This might start them breathing again. If this does not work, call an ambulance immediately and begin CPR as normal.
With children, you perform CPR as normal except, just like drowning, you give five rescue breaths first. Then continue with CPR as normal, a 1/3rd of their chest still applies.
The same with a baby, give five SHORT rescue breaths to the baby, but chest compressions are slightly different. You place two fingers between the baby's nipples in the middle, and push down 30 times as normal. Be careful not to breathe too hard. It was once said to give 'short puffs' but it was found out that they're not really that useful. Give short breaths, just don't over-do it.
If there are any questions I'll update the topic with the answers. Thanks for reading, I hope it helps.
I guess it's a good idea to start with what CPR actually is. It stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, and I think one of the most important things to remember is you're very, very unlikely to revive someone doing it.
So ignore what you see on tv when people perform CPR and the person suddenly starts coughing or their vitals come back. It hardly ever happens, so I thought it's a good idea to warn you about that, and explain why you should bother doing it at all.
As I said, the idea is not to revive the patient. Instead, the reason you perform CPR is to provide the body with oxygenated blood. Without oxygen, tissue will die quickly, and the real fear is of there being no oxygen to the brain, which results in becoming 'braindead' when the tissue dies. As long as you can keep oxygenated blood pumping through the body, the person is not 'dead'.
There's only a very small amount of oxygen in your breath, but basically, it's the best chance you've got as a person.
A word of warning and this hopefully is a bit obvious, do NOT practise this on someone who's breathing normally and their heart is beating. You actually have a chance of causing cardiac arrest on the person by doing so, by disrupting the rhythm of the heart.
Also, the method which I'm talking about is pretty new, as it's been revamped in the last few years. If you were taught how to perform CPR a few years ago you may find that what I'm saying here is different.
I'll mention this again, but instead of starting with breaths, or checking a pulse, you now start with chest compressions, and ignore taking a pulse at all as it wastes time.
Without further ado, here we go.
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Ok, imagine you've walked down a street, or into a room, and you find someone collapsed on the floor.
The first thing you need to remember is a word called DRAB. This can also be DRAB C but DRAB should be easy enough to remember.
It stands for:
D - Danger
R - Response
A - Airway
B - Breathing
To explain:
Danger - The first thing before doing anything is to check around the person to make sure that they are out of danger. Whilst you shouldn't move them unless absolutely necessary, you'll have to make your own judgement on this. The obvious example is if they'd been electrocuted, if so, get something to stand on like a telephone directory that can insulate you (non-conductive), then move them away from the electricity with something else non-conductive like a wooden broom handle. Another simple thing to watch for is if they'd slipped over on water or something. You could easily rush to the body to help, and find yourself slipping over too.
So remember basically, make sure that the casualty is out of danger, and don't put yourself in danger either. You'll be no help if you rush in quick and end up falling and incapacitating yourself.
Response - When you think it's safe to go in, kneel down to the person and try to see if you can get a response from them. Put your hands on their shoulders, shake them a little, call their name if you know it, or ask 'Hello? Can you hear me?' or something like that. Be loud, make sure you can wake them. If there's a response, naturally, talk to them, make sure they're ok. Use your common sense to decide if they need an ambulance or not, I'm trying to keep this as brief as possible so I won't go into detail about that here.
Airway - If there's no response, first make sure their airway is open. How do you do that, you ask? Well, put your hand on their forehead and tilt the head backwards, to stretch out the neck. You're not generally advised to check inside the mouth to see if there's anything blocking it, but if you can see something just in their mouth that's NOT deep down and you're sure you can reach it, take it out. The problem is that you may 1) damage the throat by trying to take something out or 2) push it down further and cause a blockage. As said, if you are sure you can easily remove it, do so. Time really counts here, so don't think about making a mistake too much.
Breathing - Ok, now you need to check if they're breathing or not. With their airway open, bring your face and cheek down to their mouth. Place your ear close to the mouth and nose, with your face facing their chest, and listen.
You're checking for three things:
1) Can you hear them breathing?
2) Can you feel their breath on your ear and cheek?
3) Is their chest rising and falling? Watch whilst you listen.
Spend ten seconds doing this. If they're not breathing, this is where it becomes serious.
Call an ambulance, now. If you have someone with you, send them. Tell them they're not breathing, any information you know. There's two reasons why you call an ambulance now:
1) You're about to start CPR. Once you start, you can't stop.
2) As mentioned, you're not going to restart their heart on your own. That's what a defibrillator is for. Remember, your job is to pump oxygenated blood around the body and stop their organs from dying.
Some of you may think "what about checking their pulse?" Well, if someone's not breathing, you need to start CPR right away. It's been decided it's a waste of time to check the pulse too, so you need to get going immediately. All you should do is check if they're breathing.
With someone gone to call the ambulance, you're now about to start CPR.
C - Compressions. Remove any thick clothing so you can access the body easier. There's a lot of controversy over this.. as in, can you rip off a woman's clothing etc to help them, or should you not? Basically we're taught to just make sure we can reach them ok, so thick clothes get off, and keep to thin materials.
I know some people will be thinking here "why don't you give breaths first? That's what you used to do!". Well stick with me, I'll talk about that at the end. It's been decided you start with compressions, so follow what I say here.
With the body lying on it's back, feel your hand up the bottom of the ribcage. In fact, do this now to yourself.
Feel on your body one side of the bottom of your ribcage. Now follow it up with your fingers until they meet at the middle of your chest, just below the line between your nipples.
At this point is a very weak part of the ribcage. There's a tiny bone here where the ribs meet in the middle, so you need to avoid this bit to stop it from breaking off with compressions.
Imagine you are kneeling down next to a body, and you've felt up the ribcage to the point in the middle. Now, you would place two fingers over the weak bone of the ribcage, and keep your hand there. If you were at the casualty's left side, you would use your right hand, and at the right side, your left. Use common sense.
Then, with your two fingers placed over the weak part to protect it, slide your other hand down their chest from their neck to meet the fingers. Hopefully now, with your hands together, you'll be at the best place to perform chest compressions, without damaging the tiny bone. If you're still confused over this, please say so, and I'll update this topic with pictures.
With your other hand now placed away from the small bone, bring the hand that was protecting it to join your other hand. Place one hand over each other and keep your hands together with your fingers locked. Don't bend your fingers, keep them out-stretched, because of fingernails. Now starts the hard bit.
Push down onto the ribcage 30 times. You need to push the heart to pump blood around the body, and to do this, you'll need to press down about 1/3rd of the chest. Push hard and don't be afraid to damage them. I'm sure they'd rather had a broken rib than end up dead. You need to keep this at a speed of about 100 compressions a minute so put some effort into it. It's very, very difficult to do, but you need to try your best. Keep your arms straight to help you press down, and try to use the weight of your body to help. You might be doing this for a long time, so judge yourself to make sure you can do as much as you can for as long as you can.
Once you have completed 30 compressions, you need to try and get oxygen into their body. Remember how you don't give breaths first? Well, it was decided that after someone collapses, hopefully they'll have enough oxygen in their blood for it not to matter, and you need to start pumping it around their body before trying to get more oxygen into their system.
To perform mouth to mouth, first again tilt their head back with their forehead and open their airway by stretching their neck back. With their head tilted right backwards, pinch their nose to stop the air from escaping through it, then place your mouth over theirs, and breathe into it. Take a breath yourself, then breathe again.
You should only give 2 breaths. That should be sufficient to place oxygen into their body, and the most important thing is getting that oxygen pumped around them.
After the two breaths, return to chest compressions. Thirty again, followed by two breaths. Continue this cycle until the ambulance arrives.
Remember, all you can do is try your best. You can't say if the person is dead or not as long as you keep CPR going. Hopefully the ambulance will arrive soon, and restart their heart.
It's not always successful, but again, it's the best chance you've got. And remember, if you ever have to use this, we all make mistakes. Try and focus and keep to what I've said here, but if you mess up, don't pressurise yourself. Try and regain yourself and get back to doing it. All you can do is try your best.
-----------------
To recap:
Check for Danger - Check their Response - Open their Airway - Check for Breathing
If they are not breathing - Call an ambulance
Remove thick clothing - Avoid the small bone in the ribcage
Perform 30 Chest Compressions - a rate of 100 per minute - push down 1/3rd of the chest
Open the Airway - Perform 2 breaths
Repeat until ambulance arrives.
------------------
There's a few things you should know about children and about drowning.
With someone who has drowned, you do everything as normal, except instead of starting compressions straight away, give FIVE rescue breaths to begin with. This might start them breathing again. If this does not work, call an ambulance immediately and begin CPR as normal.
With children, you perform CPR as normal except, just like drowning, you give five rescue breaths first. Then continue with CPR as normal, a 1/3rd of their chest still applies.
The same with a baby, give five SHORT rescue breaths to the baby, but chest compressions are slightly different. You place two fingers between the baby's nipples in the middle, and push down 30 times as normal. Be careful not to breathe too hard. It was once said to give 'short puffs' but it was found out that they're not really that useful. Give short breaths, just don't over-do it.
If there are any questions I'll update the topic with the answers. Thanks for reading, I hope it helps.