The relationship between first aid and emergency health

First aid is the most front-end and core link in the emergency health system that can directly reduce the risk of casualties. The two are not separate from "usual health management" and "emergency rescue", but a symbiosis that covers health protection in all scenarios - the former is the "last gate" for the latter under sudden risks, and the popularity of the latter directly determines the effectiveness of first aid and subsequent health outcomes.

Last year, when I was doing follow-up on emergency training in the community, I met Uncle Zhang who lived in Building 3. Last summer, he was playing chess with his old friend in the pavilion when he suddenly fell down, clutching his chest. The old man next to him, Zhou Zhou, who had just participated in the first aid training organized by the street the year before, fell to the ground without saying a word. I knelt on the ground to perform CPR, and the ambulance arrived in less than 4 minutes. Later, Uncle Zhang recovered and was discharged from the hospital without even a trace of nerve damage. The attending doctor said that if Lao Zhou had not dared to start, even if it was 2 minutes late, the best result would probably be bed rest. You see, this is the most straightforward manifestation of the relationship: emergency health publicity is done well, ordinary people have first aid skills, and when something goes wrong, they can pull people back from the dead.

There are actually different voices in the industry regarding the boundary between the two. Some public health scholars insist that first aid is too professional. Ordinary people are not systematically trained and are prone to operational errors, which in turn increases the burden on the injured. The core of emergency health should be "prevention" and "rapid referral." There is no need to force everyone to learn first aid. I met a student before who was afraid to do CPR when he was learning CPR. He said that he had seen in the news that someone broke an old man’s ribs while doing CPR, but his family members sued him because he thought it was too risky. But front-line emergency practitioners on the other side generally disagree with this statement. I talked with Team Liu from the Municipal Emergency Center, and he said that the golden rescue time for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is 4 minutes, and the average arrival time of 120 is at least 10 minutes. By the time the ambulance arrives, people will be cold. "You said that ordinary people are unprofessional, and unprofessional operations are better than just watching. "People are no longer strong." This is a rough statement, and the accidental injury monitoring data released by the National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention in 2023 can also prove it: among the more than 2 million accidental injury death cases in China every year, 37% of the deaths can be avoided through timely on-site first aid. Behind this number is the gap in the popularization of emergency health and the improvement of first aid skills.

To be honest, I have taken the stance that "ordinary people don't need to learn first aid" until two years ago when I met a girl who fainted due to hypoglycemia in the subway station. I was holding my cell phone and could only call 120. I watched a college student next to me carrying a first aid kit squat down to do an assessment, feed sugar, and pinch people. The whole set of actions was smooth and smooth. It was then that I realized that emergency health has never been a subject only for professionals. It should cover the daily life of every ordinary person.

During the last Heimlich Technique training, an aunt raised her hands to demonstrate on stage. She said that her 3-year-old grandson had eaten jelly and got stuck in his throat last year. She could only pat his back at the time. After patting the child for a long time, his face turned purple. In the end, a nurse from the clinic downstairs passed by and rescued him. "If I knew this technique at that time, I wouldn't have suffered that." Now the aunt demonstrates it to her son and daughter-in-law when she has nothing to do. She even bought a Heimlich model at home, saying that the whole family must know how to do it. You see, this practice of integrating first aid skills into daily family life actually moves the line of defense for emergency health from the front of the hospital to the home, which is much more effective than saying "be careful when eating" every day.

It’s a bit like the security guard we install on our mobile phones. Emergency health is to scan for viruses, clear memory, remind you not to download risky software, and prevent your phone from freezing. And first aid is the series of operations that you take out your phone immediately after it suddenly falls into the water, wipe it dry, and shut down the phone. If you don’t do health management, the probability of getting sick is already high. If you don’t know first aid, if something goes wrong, no matter how well you maintain it, it may turn into a brick.

Fortunately, the views of both sides are slowly merging, and they are not black and white. Emergency health training in many places no longer requires ordinary people to meet the professional standards of first responders, but is divided into steps: the first step is to learn to identify risks, know the typical symptoms of emergencies such as myocardial infarction, stroke, and foreign bodies stuck in the throat, and call 120 immediately to explain the location and symptoms.； The second step is to learn the basic operations. You don’t need to be precise enough to get a certificate. You just need to know that CPR requires pressing on a hard surface, the pressing position is at the midpoint of the line connecting the two nipples, the Heimlich force should be applied diagonally upward, and how to apply pressure to stop the bleeding if it bleeds. ； The third step is to provide in-depth training to those who are interested and take the officially certified first aid certificate. In addition, the Civil Code now clearly states that well-intentioned rescuers do not need to bear civil liability, which also relieves everyone of their worries.

I came across a short video a few days ago. A young man rescued a little girl with a stuck duck bone in a hot pot restaurant. After rescuing the girl, he turned around and left. During the interview, he said that he had learned two tricks when the company organized emergency health training, and he never expected to use them. You see, there are so many lofty principles. The relationship between first aid and emergency health, to put it bluntly, is to spend an extra 10 minutes to learn a trick, and when an accident occurs, you can leave more ways for people around you to survive. It's that simple.