"Is the patient breathing?!"
Year 8 Students Undertake Emergency First Aid Training.
On Friday 2nd February, every student in our Year 8 underwent basic emergency First Aid training. This was driven by the fantastic personnel at the London Ambulance Service, who are visiting all London schools to teach and demystify CPR and the use of a portable defibrilator.
https://www.londonambulance.nhs.uk/getting-involved/become-a-london-lifesaver/
In small groups, each with a fully trained Paramedic, our young students were empowered with the knowledge, understanding and skills to potentially save someone's life!
Working on the worse case scenario that they had come across somebody lying unconscious on the floor, hands-on training was carried out using special CPR practice dummies. After an explanation of how CPR works and a demonstration by the Paramedic, each of our students then had a try. Both Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) and the use of a portable semi-automatic defibrilator (of which we have two of in school) were taught.
The prospect of finding someone in need of emergency first aid is very scary, but empowered with this training each of our Year 8 students would now have a better idea of what to do. With a bit of courage and the confidence they now hold, even if they couldn't remember exactly what they were taught, that unconscious person would have a considerably better chance of survival than if nobody did anything!
Enormous thanks go to all the paramedics who joined us for a very busy day, including a certain Mr Julian Green, who our students probably didn't realise is our our Chair of Governors, as well as a highly skilled Paramedic Technician. Our visitors commented on how well behaved and engaged our Year 8s were and they in turn certainly appeared to have enjoyed and grown through the experience. We are, yet again, extremely proud of them.
How to save a life!
If a person had collapsed, wasn't breathing and their heart had stopped about 80 years ago, that would have almost certainly have been that! They would have been officially dead!
But today, with the discovery, refinement and widespread training in CPR, everyone's chances of survival are very much better...
...but you've got to be quick!
If you aren't breathing and your heart isn't pumping blood around your body, your brain is being starved of oxygen and you only have about 4 to 6 minutes before you are brain dead!
Anyone dealing with a non-breathing casualty can't afford to wait for the ambulance to turn up, but immediate CPR will extend those few minutes until more help can arrive, and that's why it's considered so important that everyone knows what to do.
