What are the types of basic first aid skills?

The basic first aid skills we talk about daily revolve around the principle of "saving lives first, treating injuries later", and can be roughly classified into the following directions: life support, trauma treatment, emergency response, and special environment injury treatment. Ordinary people do not need to go through all categories. If you master the core skills with the highest priority, you can cover most daily first aid scenarios.

The highest priority is definitely life support. The core is the use of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and automated external defibrillator (AED). These two are specially designed to deal with cardiac arrest. They are the only first aid skills that can save lives in the golden 4 minutes. There is no dispute. Last summer, when I was doing a science road show in a business district, I met an aunt who suddenly had a heart attack and fell to the ground while shopping. People around her were so panicked that they dared to call 120. My colleagues and I rushed over to cooperate, performing chest compressions and AED twice for defibrillation. By the time 120 arrived, the aunt had already resumed breathing on her own. If no one knew these two things at the time, it would have taken at least 10 minutes to wait for the ambulance to arrive. I really can’t imagine the consequences.

If what you encounter is not a fatal cardiac arrest, but an injury caused by an external force such as a bump, cut, or fall, you will need trauma management skills. The traditional basic trauma first aid is a four-piece set of hemostasis, bandaging, immobilization, and transportation. However, the popular science circle now has different opinions on whether to teach ordinary people about immobilization and transportation. One group believes that ordinary people do not have professional spinal boards and fixed braces. The wrong way to apply force can easily aggravate secondary injuries of fractures and spinal injuries. It is better to just teach the taboo of "do not move the injured with suspected spinal fractures or aortic bleeding at will." ； The other group believes that they should at least learn the key points of simple triangular towel fixation and flat-carrying, which can be used in extreme situations such as earthquakes and car accidents when ambulances are not available. When I do community science popularization, I usually compromise. I focus on teaching compression to stop bleeding and pressure bandaging. I only talk about taboos on fixation and transportation. Last month, I met an old man in the community who climbed up a ladder to change a light bulb and fell. My neighbor wanted to help him sit up, but I happened to stop him. Later, I went to the hospital to check that it was a lumbar compression fracture. If I really helped him up, he might have been paralyzed by the pressure.

In addition to injuries caused by external forces, sudden emergencies are more common in daily life, which correspond to emergency response skills. Contents such as the Heimlich maneuver to deal with foreign bodies stuck in the throat, the FAST principle for identifying stroke, and the correct handling of hypoglycemia and epileptic seizures are all highly practical content. There are also many misunderstandings here. For example, many people think that when an epileptic seizure occurs, they should put towels and chopsticks in their mouths to prevent biting their tongues. Nowadays, academic circles have long discouraged this practice. On the contrary, it can easily cause suffocation or tooth damage. Just turn the person sideways and let the saliva flow out to avoid choking. There was a mother who took a one-hour science class with me before. Not even half a month after she returned, her baby got stuck in her throat after eating jelly. She patted her back as she was taught and added Heimlich, and the jelly came out in a few dozen seconds. If she had waited for 120 seconds, the child would most likely have suffered brain damage due to lack of oxygen.

The last category is the treatment of injuries under special circumstances, such as heatstroke in summer, frostbite in winter, burns, scalds, snake bites, etc. The priority is not that high, and most of them will not be fatal immediately, but if you learn to do it, you can avoid a lot of suffering and avoid aggravation of the injury. For example, many elderly people still believe that they should apply toothpaste and soy sauce to burns and scalds. In fact, the correct operation is to rinse the patient with running cold water at room temperature for more than 15 minutes before sending him to the hospital. These small skills may seem inconspicuous, but they are particularly practical when used.

In fact, if you really want to break it down, there are more than a dozen small skills under each major category, but for ordinary people, there is really no need to worry about classification. If you are proficient in the four categories of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, AED use, Heimlich maneuver, and compression and hemostasis, more than 90% of people will be able to do it. If you are really unsure, call 120 as soon as possible, and the dispatcher from the emergency center will also guide you step by step on the phone. Don’t be afraid of making mistakes. Dare to reach out and reach out is better than anything else.