What are the types and characteristics of basic first aid skills?

The basic first aid we often refer to is essentially a practical skill that ordinary people can master without complex equipment and buy time for professional medical treatment in the golden first aid window outside the hospital. The core covers three categories: maintenance of vital signs, emergency trauma treatment, and recognition and response to common emergencies. The design logic of all skills cannot bypass the three cores of "low threshold, high fault tolerance, and quick onset of effect."

Last month, I was giving a publicity lecture on first aid in the community. When I was leaving, I met an old man who got stuck in his airway after eating glutinous rice balls. His face instantly turned purple from holding himself back. His wife next to him was so frightened that he started crying. The uncle who had just practiced the Heimlich maneuver for two minutes came up and hugged his waist from behind. After three blows, he spit out the glutinous rice balls, which took less than half a minute. Skills such as Heimlich and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which are classified as maintaining vital signs, are most characterized by "grabbing time" - after all, patients with complete airway obstruction and cardiac arrest only have a window of three or four minutes left for the rescuer. There is a high chance that 120 will come over. The best opportunity has been missed. This type of skill requires almost no tools. You can master it by memorizing the key points of the movements and practicing them three or five times. The fault tolerance rate is also high. Even if the impact position is slightly off and the chest compression depth is one or two centimeters different, it is still much better than doing nothing.

If maintaining vital signs is "saving lives," then the core of trauma management skills is "preventing chaos." Last month, we responded to an electric vehicle accident. The young man fell and his arm hurt so much that he couldn't move it. My friend who was traveling with him thought it was twisted, so he rubbed it hard for a long time and tried to help him break it back into place. When we arrived, we found out that the fracture of his forearm was just a closed one, but the severe rubbing caused the broken end to rupture the blood vessel, and the amount of bleeding was close to the threshold of mild shock. Skills such as hemostasis, wound washing, fracture fixation, and cooling of burns and scalds are designed to avoid operations that require professional judgment. For example, to stop bleeding, give priority to compression rather than tying a tourniquet. When fixing fractures, as long as the broken limb is not shaken, there is no need to pursue reset. It is acknowledging that ordinary people do not have imaging equipment and cannot judge deep-seated injuries. If you can lock the injury in the present and avoid causing secondary injuries, the task is considered completed.

As for the identification and response to common emergencies, there is still a lot of discussion in the industry. The most typical one is whether to feed nitroglycerin to patients with suspected myocardial infarction? One school of thought believes that as long as the patient has a history of coronary heart disease and the current blood pressure is not less than 90/60mmHg, sublingual administration can quickly relieve coronary ischemia. The other school of thought believes that it is difficult for ordinary people to distinguish whether it is a right ventricular myocardial infarction or the possibility of aortic dissection. Blindly taking medicine will lower blood pressure and worsen the condition. I have encountered three family members who were given nitroglycerin when they came to the hospital. When the patient arrived at the hospital, the blood pressure dropped to only 60/30, and the blood pressure had to be increased first before dealing with the heart problem. Therefore, the core feature of this type of skill is actually "judge first, do less and make less mistakes". You can quickly recognize the signs of stroke (face crooked, unable to lift one arm, slurred speech), and can judge that it is anaphylactic shock rather than an ordinary rash. Don't give medicine blindly and don't move the patient randomly. Call 120 as soon as possible to explain the address and typical symptoms. This is much more useful than blindly operating with half-knowledge.

To put it bluntly, basic first aid is actually like a spare tire in your car. You don’t need to know how to repair a tire or do dynamic balancing like a car repair shop master. But if you get a tire puncture on the road, you can put on the spare tire and slowly drive to the repair station. That’s enough. You don’t need to pursue overly professional and complicated operations. Steady and steady steps to minimize risks are the core meaning of ordinary people learning first aid.