Children's safety and first aid open class

Ordinary parents do not need to memorize an entire first aid manual when learning about child safety and first aid. They must first understand the priority of "risk prevention always takes precedence over injury treatment" and then firmly master the three most common standardized treatment plans for accidents. This will cover more than 80% of children's sudden safety problems at home and outdoors, and they will not panic or become weak when encountering an accident.

When I was doing charity science popularization in the community two years ago, I met a mother who was particularly impressed. She had memorized Heimlich's operating steps through a short video, and she talked about it very clearly. But last year, her 2-year-old baby choked on jelly. She stood nearby and her hands were shaking so hard that she couldn't even hold the baby's waist. The owner of the convenience store downstairs had served in the military and learned first aid, and the jelly came out in five seconds. Later, she told me that she had only memorized the steps before, but had never practiced it, and she had never thought, "Actually, don't give whole jelly to children under 3 years old, otherwise this will not happen at all."

To be honest, I have been doing children’s first aid science for 6 years, and 90% of the accidents I have seen can actually be avoided in advance. You may not believe it, but we have collected statistics on children’s accidental medical treatment in the past three years in our jurisdiction. The top three causes are: unfixed floor furniture toppling over, ingestion of disinfection/insecticide products mistakenly packed in drink bottles, and foreign bodies in the airway caused by running to eat. They are not the same thing as bruises on table corners and falls from slides as you think. Last time I went to a mother’s house for a home visit. Her table corners and wall corners were covered with soft anti-collision strips. As a result, there was an unfixed 1.8-meter-high picture book shelf in the entrance hall, and a small stool was placed next to it. The child could reach the upper shelf when he stepped on it, and it fell over in a flash. Wasn’t this a time bomb planted? Risk prevention and control is like installing an invisible airbag for a baby. When something happens, the first aid you learn is the last safety belt. Don’t reverse the order.

Oh, by the way, during the last practical training, a father was practicing Heimlich. He used too much force and tore off the arms of the simulation doll, which made everyone laugh for a long time. So, you really need to practice it, don't just rely on your brain to memorize it, otherwise your hands will forget it. Of course, there are always gaps in the secret, so don’t deal with it blindly if you encounter trouble. I have seen too many blind operations that only aggravated the injury. Let’s talk about foreign bodies in the airway. Many people hug the waist and push hard. This is for babies over 1 year old. If you push like this if you are under 1 year old, it is easy to injure the abdominal organs. You must first turn the baby over, face down and lean on your forearm. With the head down and feet high, pat the middle of the shoulder blade. If it doesn’t come out after 5 times, turn it over and perform chest compressions 5 times. Repeat the cycle. One thing to mention here is that the industry currently has different opinions on whether ordinary parents should perform abdominal thrusts on their children: most doctors on the front line of the emergency department think that as long as the operation is standardized, there will be no problem and it can save lives. ； However, some experts in children's surgery believe that ordinary parents have no practical experience and can easily cause rib fractures and intra-abdominal organ rupture if the force is applied in the wrong position. It is better to give priority to patting on the back. If this is not possible, send the doctor immediately. You can judge based on your actual situation. If you have received practical training before, go ahead decisively. If you don’t have the confidence, don’t do it forcefully. Just slap 120 on the back and call 120 at the same time. Our pre-hospital first aid doctors often say the "golden four minutes". Every extra second you can gain is worth a second.

Let’s talk about burns and scalds that everyone often encounters. Last week, I received a consultation. The baby knocked over the hot water cup. My grandma quickly applied a thick layer of mint toothpaste, saying it could reduce the temperature and relieve the pain. However, when it was sent to the hospital, the doctor broke the blisters when cleaning the toothpaste, which actually increased the risk of infection. This is also where the conflict between the old concepts and the new guidelines is quite big: Many elders think that applying toothpaste, soy sauce, and sesame oil is useful. When I was burned when I was a child, my grandmother also applied sesame oil to me. It was indeed cool. However, evidence-based medicine shows that these things not only have no therapeutic effect, but also contaminate the wound and affect the doctor's judgment of the injury. The currently recommended treatment method is to rinse the patient with running cold water at room temperature for 15 to 20 minutes. Do not use ice water, as this can easily cause frostbite. After rinsing, cover the patient with a clean plastic wrap or sterile gauze and send him to the hospital. It’s that simple. Don’t do anything fancy.

There are also people who mistakenly take drugs or toxic substances. Many parents’ first reaction is to pick their throats and induce vomiting. This also depends on the situation: if you take ordinary vitamins and probiotics that are not toxic, just drink more water and observe.； If it is corrosive disinfectants or pesticides, inducing vomiting will corrode the esophagus twice, which is even more dangerous. ； If it is antihypertensive drugs, hypoglycemic drugs, sedatives, etc. that may be life-threatening, take the drug package to the hospital as soon as possible. The doctor will perform gastric lavage according to the situation. Don't mess around at home. There was a child who mistook his grandma's antihypertensive medicine for candy and ate half a bottle. The parents picked at his throat for half an hour at home, and the child's esophagus was scraped with nails and bleeds before he was sent to the hospital. Do you think it was a loss or not?

A parent once asked me whether a tourniquet should be used if the child suffers from arterial bleeding. There is no unified opinion in the industry. Pre-hospital first aid training will teach everyone that if there is spurting arterial bleeding in the limbs, use a tourniquet to tie the proximal end of the wound and relax it every 15 minutes to avoid limb necrosis.； However, there are also reports from clinicians that many ordinary parents do not master the tightness and relaxation time, and instead cause necrosis of the limbs that could have been saved. Therefore, it is recommended that everyone use clean gauze or towels to press the wound firmly and send it directly to the hospital. Unless the bleeding is extremely large and cannot be stopped by pressing, consider using a tourniquet.

I didn’t prepare any complicated PPT for today’s lesson, and I don’t want to list more than a dozen precautions for you to memorize. To put it bluntly, how can raising a baby be 100% safe? If you are afraid of this and that every day, the baby won’t even have to leave the house. We learn these things not to become first aid experts, but just so that if something happens, we won’t panic so much that we just cry, we know what we can and cannot do, and we can buy a little more time for our children. That’s enough. By the way, don’t forget to pack away the unfixed cabinets and unlabeled disinfectants first when you get back. This is much more useful than memorizing the first aid steps 10 times.