Bystanders often feel helpless when they see somebody collapse or get injured, but knowing just a little about the basics could transform the chances of survival, writes Lissa Christopher
The young marathon runner was still lying face down and showed no signs of life when Penelope Little arrived.
“As soon as I rolled him over it was very obvious … he wasn’t breathing and … I could tell pretty quickly he needed CPR [cardio pulmonary resuscitation],” the NSW Ambulance spokeswoman said. There were lots of people around but no one had tried to turn him over, let alone start CPR. They’d called for help and left it at that.
“At a bare minimum they should have rolled him onto his side, into the recovery position,” she says. “You should never leave someone lying face down. But this man required CPR and the fact that nobody gave it to him – it was alarming. It was like, ‘come on, people!’ This man is obviously unwell.”
It’s common for bystanders to do nothing when someone has collapsed and wait for “someone in a uniform” to turn up. Studies from the US have shown that the primary reason bystanders don’t attempt CPR is fear of not doing it correctly but, as Harvard Medical School states in its public health guides, “Poor CPR is better than no CPR” (see box).
”People don’t realise that the role of a bystander is actually very important,” Little says. “Particularly in case of CPR. It needs to be done very soon after the person has gone into cardiac arrest. It you have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, your chance of survival is about 3 per cent and the only way you are going to survive is if somebody quickly recognises that you are in cardiac arrest, quickly does CPR and quickly calls an ambulance.”
Presuming CPR requires an expert is probably the most serious first-aid misconception, but as NSW Ambulance and St John Ambulance will attest, there are plenty of others.
Take fainting, for example. It’s common for well-meaning people to try to get someone who has fainted to sit up. In fact, they should be left lying down.
St John Ambulance deals with a lot of fainting during the Royal Easter Show, Little says, particularly among elderly visitors. It happens everywhere from the showbag pavilion to the scones ”and it’s amazing how many times you get there and someone is trying to prop this woman up on a chair when all she wants to do is faint and lie back on the ground”.
“I often say to people, if a person wants to faint, let them do it. In essence, it’s the body trying to fix itself, usually because there’s a problem with their blood pressure.”
Other scenarios where paramedics and St John Ambulance volunteers commonly encounter misapprehensions include bleeding noses, burns, poisoning, penetrating injuries, choking, diabetic coma and seizures.
People often don’t realise that diabetics can lapse into a coma due to high blood sugar as well as low blood sugar, Caroline Woods, an intensive care paramedic with the Ambulance Service of NSW, says. Feeding sugar to someone who is having a high blood sugar (hyperglycemic) attack is only going to make things worse.
“We often find someone lying on the floor with all these lollies hanging out of their mouth,” she says. “Someone has tried their best to help but they’ve got it wrong.”
Little recalls attending to a seven-year-old girl having a seizure and her father had his hand in her mouth, holding onto her tongue in the mistaken belief he was stopping her from swallowing it. “I said to him, ‘take your hand out of her mouth and let her have her seizure’,” she says.
“Never try to hold down someone who is having a seizure,” Woods says. Clear them a space and put something soft under their head if possible. Don’t put anything in their mouth.
It’s not actually possible for someone to swallow their own tongue. People often bite their tongue during a seizure, but they’re highly unlikely to bite through it so don’t panic, she says.
Despite the poor odds, the marathon runner Little found lying face down did survive. Little got to him quite quickly and performed CPR for several minutes, another St John person arrived in minutes with a defibrillator and an ambulance arrived shortly after that. “He was 29 and he made a full recovery,” Little says. “He was a very lucky guy.”
“In my job, you often wish that a bystander had been more helpful. We are so lucky with NSW Ambulance that when you dial 000 they will give you advice over the phone but often people are hysterical or they don’t listen to that advice or they hang up.
“So many times I have thought, ‘please, God, I hope somebody is already doing CPR … because we are not going to be able to save this person unless somebody has started’.”
St John Ambulance runs regular first-aid courses and recommends a CPR refresher every 12 months.
Your closest Apply First Aid and Perform CPR course on The Northern Beaches is at The Brookvale Hotel. Come along and get trained by Simple Instruction and enjoy a fun day out.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/first-aid-and-the-myths-that-cost-lives-20110831-1jlty.html#ixzz1dvo8I1D2
Comments (14)
Comments for this story are closed, but you can
still have your say.
ABC (Moderator):
17 Aug 2011 8:29:45pm
Do you think gyms need tougher regulations?
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hairy nosed wombat:
17 Aug 2011 9:02:49pm
All gyms and public swimming pools should have Automated External
Defibrillators (AEDs). There is very good evidence for this – they would save a
few lives a year across Australia, and are only a couple of thousand
dollars.
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TigerLee:
17 Aug 2011 11:54:59pm
I’m a regular weight trainer and frequent the gym and believe that everyone
does need to be sensible and be responsible for themselves. If you know yourself
and your body well enough and you are honest with yourself then you should know
your limits, etc. Having said that, there needs to be more guidance in the gym
and DEFINITELY people with First Aid training on the gym floor – not just one
person. Not sure that this environment should be too heavily regulated – don’t
we have enough of that but something needs to happen. Gyms need to be more
responsible and sensible when it comes to its patrons and their health &
safety.
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Lindsay Cooper:
17 Aug 2011 8:39:48pm
No! We have more than enough regulations now and many of them don’t work
as intended. Regulations concerning drugs just keep the price up.
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peter of mitcham:
17 Aug 2011 8:59:25pm
Yes I do! Personally I wouldn’t go anywhere near them but my wife attended
one of those “women only” gyms. How does that work? Isn’t it against the law to
discriminate against someone in providing a service on the basis of their
gender? Anyway this mob was downright dangerous in the pressure they put on
people. Them and their stupid little school games trying to shame people into
exercising harder. I think they should be tightly regulated. Take down the “No
Pain No Gain” signs and put up one that says “A Fitter Person Is Not Necessarily
A Better Person”
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Founder:
17 Aug 2011 8:59:52pm
Most of the time I go to the Gym there is no one on duty.
Will they ban
the 24 hour gyms?
People do need to take some responsibility for their
own lives.
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Michael:
17 Aug 2011 11:01:16pm
I completely agree. Let people be responsible for their own decisions. I know
that I want to be.
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Foundette:
17 Aug 2011 11:47:19pm
“People do need to take some responsibility for their own lives.”
How
would they do that? By administering first aid to themselves after they’ve
collapsed?
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Lawrie:
17 Aug 2011 9:09:56pm
No! While I don’t use a gym, I run and work out with weights in my own home.
What ever happened to personal responsibility? Take control of your life. If you
slip over in a supermarket, you should have taken more care, instead of
expecting to sue the supermarket for ‘their negligence’. If you have a fatal
heart attack walking up steps, sad, but that is life.
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Jeppa:
17 Aug 2011 9:17:12pm
Gyms do need to take occupational health and safety more seriously than they
do. They are high risk areas, but there seldom seems to be anyone qualified to
deal with injuries or illnesses available. At any other high risk workplace, not
having a staff member with a current first aid certificate would be completely
unacceptable.
Whether the government is able to – or even should – change
the way gym managers choose to run their facilities is another question. A
better approach would be for consumers to ask serious questions about safety and
the qualifications of *all* staff before signing up. There are plenty of gyms
out there to choose from.
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CVL:
17 Aug 2011 9:28:34pm
Absolutely – I’ve seen some appalling behaviour from on-duty gym
“instructors”, from running away to laughing when people have seriously injured
themselves on the equipment. And then there are those 2-3 hour windows that
every gym I’ve been a member of has where there are no staff on
duty.
Clearly the only way forward is through the threat of government
sanctions on an organisation and/or an individual.
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rod:
17 Aug 2011 9:29:30pm
No
I suppose first aid training is desirable for anyone, but there is
no extra risk in a Gym over anything else you do.
I just think we need
less rules and more common sense.
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FitnessEmployee:
17 Aug 2011 9:52:19pm
In SA, it is an industry standard that gym instructors, personal trainers and
fitness instructors have up to date CPR and First Aid along with relevant
qualifications. It is also common sense as fitness facilities have a duty of
care over all people in their centre, so why wouldn’t a facility ensure staff
know what they’re doing? Good centres hound their employees when certificates
fall out of date; even better ones provide training regularly to ensure no one
has an excuse. I have never worked in a centre that will employ someone without
first aid and CPR training (and I’ve worked in LOTS of SA fitness facilities).
I have worked at a centre where a client has died from a heart attack
and staff were quick to respond and keep the client alive until paremedics
arrived. Often, despite all the best cues and care and precautions from fitness
centre staff, people just have heart attacks or other health issues. In the case
I was exposed to, it was caused by something unpreventable, whether the client
was at the gym, at home, or at a hospital.
People do need to accept
personal responsibility and recognise their boundaries when exercising AND staff
have a responsibility to provide safe and effective information regarding a
person’s exercise regieme and known health issues. This is why many choose to
exercise under supervision of fitness facilities rather than on their
own.
If you feel you are not getting this from your fitness centre, ask
them why, as its a legal requirement (and common sense). It might also be time
to shop around for another gym!
Regarding “shaming” participants into
exercise: every instructor is different, same as doctors, nurses, physios,
lawyers, etc. and if you don’t like their personality, try another instructor.
Some do use pushier techniques (like what you imagine or see on TV), but more
use motivational psychology and encouragement as these are proven to get better
long-term results which ultimately serves the industry better and provides job
security!
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Teubes:
17 Aug 2011 10:31:21pm
The gym supports it ? if I owned the gym I would of already trained all staff
in 1st aid and installed AEDs. A big gym like fitness first should already have
this in place. You would think, wouldn’t you ?
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