The numbers of injuries children suffer while in school is on the rise. Usually, most accidents and injuries happen on the playground, where there are constant bruises, broken bones, collisions, and bleeding. But of course, some injuries would be due to negligence of teachers, school administration, janitors, and sometimes students’
All in all, the injuries present both teachers, children, and other staff the responsibility of ensuring they control or reduce the risk of occurrence. However, if injuries and accidents occur, every individual around the victim should be able to help manage the injuries.
Unfortunately, you can only and effectively manage emergencies when you know what to do or where to begin. And that requires that both teachers, staff, and students get equipped with first aid skills and knowledge.
Here are some of the first aid skills and techniques that could turn you into a lifesaver while in school:
- Learn how to clean or address wounds
Injuries are inevitable, and your chances of experiencing someone with wounds or deep bruises in a school setup is very high. But if you know how you can manage cuts, scrapes that show some traces of blood, you would help prevent the victim from experiencing much pain and reduce the rate of blood loss.
Learning how to clean or address would provide the first step to recovery, mainly when the wound is managed to prevent infections or worsening. Therefore, learn how to wrap, clean wounds and how to apply lacerations. And with adequate training, you would be able to make clean and uninfected wounds.
- Controlling and stopping bleeding
Some injuries would lead to severe and excessive bleeding. So what happens if you are the one close to help the victim? Will you leave them to bleed to death? No, even if you don’t know their HIV status, you have to save them.
Since you may never know when such an occurrence may happen, it would be best to learn or know how to manage bleedings. Because, you may be the one standing between one’s life and death. Meaning if you react faster and effectively, they stand a chance to survive.
Therefore, make a tourniquet and apply some pressure on or above the wound. You can also raise the bleeding part above to slow down the bleeding. This would help save the victim’s life before the paramedics arrive. Besides, you also stand a chance of helping yourself, should you experience some cuts or severe injuries and no one is around to help.
- Learn how to apply Heimlich Maneuver
Naturally, choking is more rampant in babies. However, that doesn’t mean we have an age limit for choking. Anybody can have their throat blocked while taking food or when liquids. Besides, choking is claiming more life than you can imagine, both of different ages.
Therefore, you should learn how to conduct Heimlich to help dislodge whatever might be choking your victim before their airways are blocked. A faster response would save an individual from brain damage. However, sometimes it can be hard to know that someone is choking.
So, how do you know that one is choking? A choking person may have a continuous cough until the food or the object blocking their airways is removed. Meaning if the thing is not quickly, it would entirely cut off the one’s air supply
Also, you may know if one is choking when they display signs like inability to:
- Cough
- Speak
- Breath
- Learn to conduct CPR
Learning how to conduct would help save lives, among other invaluable benefits. Equip yourself with Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) skills. You’ll be able to save heart-related emergencies such as heart attack or cardiac arrest.
Therefore, you need to learn how to administer CPR because you may never know when your friend or other students may experience heart conditions. Besides, with CPR, time is very crucial; any delay may cause loss of life. So, you should know some passerby and standby CPR skills to help in the absence of professional CPR administrators.
Here is what you can do to save a life:
When you notice a victim is not breathing, have three things in your mind- chest compressions, airways, and check if the person is breathing. You can conduct chest compressions to re-establish the victim’s blood circulation. Or, you can do mouth-to-mouth to help restore the victim’s breath and provide artificial ventilation that helps preserve breath. These steps would help keep the victim’s blood flowing and breathing until the paramedics arrive.
- Learn to perform stitches
With rampant rates of injuries in school, you may never know when you have to stick someone. So, you should ensure you learn how to perform stitches so that when a situation demands your expertise, you’ll be ready to help.
Conclusion
Having first aid skills would ensure you’re capable of saving during emergencies. Therefore, to be able to help during injuries, it would be better if you know how to: clean and address wounds, stop bleedings, apply Heimlich Maneuver, conduct CPR and be able to perform stitches.
