first aid

The current offering of the Sheriff's Auxiliary's Tactical Medical Training will be almost-entirely funded by a generous donation from the Mount Vernon Chamber of Commerce as a thank-you for our Apple Butter Makin' Days Deployment. The remainder of the class is being covered by a contribution from Mid-Missouri Bank and the families of volunteers.

Another video today for people to think about. This is a presentation by a man who created United Hatzalah in Israel: an organization of volunteers who put ambulances on motorcycles to decrease response time and provide support for critical patients while the full-size ambulance fights it's way through traffic. Over the years, his organization has grown to thousands of volunteers in several countries and has become a vehicle for knitting together Jews, Arabs, and Christians.

We operate in a community with some number of Latinos (3.39% of the population from the 2000 census), some of whom have little or no English skills. Spanish proficiency can therefore be a highly useful skill in emergency or disaster response. Spanish For First Responders is a handy resource with vocabulary (such as anatomy terms), phrase lists (consent, mentation, examination), and scenarios for first aid/medical response.

 
As I was preparing to write this article on an event twenty years ago today, I noticed the headline that a shooting has just occurred in a Connecticut elementary school with 28 dead, 20 of them children.

I was laid up in bed with my still swollen ankle propped up on a pillow, a zip-lock bag of now melted snow pressed against it. A much-abused copy of Billy Joel's Kohept played on the stereo across the room. The room was sweltering, the window next to me open wide and the snow long-since melted from the overhang, but I wasn't going to limp down the stairs to adjust the thermostat back down again. A knobbed stick lay propped against my milk-crate nightstand surmounted by an ugly lamp, which was now off, the room lit dimly by the lamp-posts of the small cluster of upper class modular apartments, Mods, nestled in the snowy woods. A stack of untouched textbooks lay between me and the window, a Weis and Hickman novel closed and marked on the sill itself.

 
"Successful resuscitation from cardiac arrest was optimized at 100–120 compressions/minute."
A recent study appearing in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services ("Study Determines Optimal Chest Compression Rate") examined results of rescuer CPR for optimal blood flow and best patient survival to hospital discharge. The study largely confirmed the belief that rates of compression over 100 per minute were best but also established that rates of compression over 120 per minute decreased victim survival rate.