24-Nov-23

I learned something quite fascinating a couple days ago. I was in my Health Education class, and my teacher was doing his usual teaching lessons, but then he announced that we were going to learn how to do CPR. I was pretty excited to learn, since I’ve always wondered how it works. It’s really useful to learn the method because you could end up having to use it whenever and on whoever. CPR is a medical process used to recognize and respond correctly to breathing problems and cardiac arrest. People usually don’t react to situations like these in fear of disease transport, getting sued, or just not knowing what to do. The risk of disease transport from CPR is very minimal, so it shouldn’t be something people fear that much. You should always obtain consent from a victim before performing CPR on them, but consent is implied if the victim is unconscious or unresponsive. The three steps to do in an emergency are check (the victim for responsiveness), call (nearby emergency service, like 911), and care (for the victim until help arrives). If you notice the patient isn’t breathing normally, then you know it’s time to give them CPR. The proper way to give CPR is to make sure the patient is lying flat, then lock your hands and place them on their chest, and then use your body weight to compress the chest, ensuring that your hands go about 2 inches deep, then letting the chest rise while still keeping your hands in contact. Do this to a 30:2 ratio, where after every 30 compressions you blow two breaths of air from your mouth to the patient’s. When you’re giving mouth to mouth, it’s important to block their nose so that the air only goes one way. The ideal pace is 30 compressions in 18 seconds, and your arms need to be straight; you use your body weight to make a compression. One interesting fact I learned is that too much CPR can break a person’s ribs, but you should keep going because the patient’s life is more important. My teacher had a dummy that we could practice chest compressions on, and I was one of the first people brave enough to try it out. I followed the directions, and gave a short cycle of compressions. He was very pleased and told me I was a natural at it. Now I’m confident that I could save a life if someone needed it.