Pre-medical medical care: advantage and harm of good intentions

Each of us faces from time to time that other people need the immediate help. We react to it differently: one at once call doctors and police, others rush to victims and try to save them independently. Some pass by at all … Certainly, desire to help the neighbor who got into trouble, quite naturally for any decent person. However not everyone understands that to work in a similar situation, being guided by exclusively good intentions, it is impossible. It is necessary to give urgent pre-medical help competently not to do much harm the victim.

The widespread mistakes made by inexperienced "rescuers"

Most of Russians are in confidence that independently to save the person who got into trouble there is quite enough desire to help and the known share of determination. The similar delusion can cost much to the victim as "rescuer" too active and absolutely unsophisticated in this case can put true life of other person on a survival side. To employees of departments of the emergency medicine the main mistakes which are made when rendering the urgent pre-medical help are well-known:

• Unnecessary movements of the victim. Desire to lay the wounded or sick person as is possible more conveniently quite naturally, but it is possible to do it not always. If the victim has severe injuries (for example, when falling from height or after road accident), any movement can aggravate its state and lead to serious consequences. Not without reason professional rescuers, as a rule, at first sort blockages or the case of the crashed car, and only then with care transfer the wounded. It is impossible to touch about places and the person to whom it became bad on the street if there is a suspicion of a heart attack or a stroke;
• Wrong applying a tourniquet. Mistakes can be the most various – from use as a plait of the objects injuring skin (for example, a wire) and their imposings on a naked body, before attempts to press vessels below the place of bleeding. Situations when the plait is imposed for too long term are especially dangerous or forget to inform doctors on time of its imposing – they are fraught with necrosis of fabrics and even perspective of loss of an extremity. The safe term of installation of a plait one hour in the winter and one and a half-two hours is considered in the summer. At the time of imposing it is necessary to attach to a bandage or clothes a note with the exact indication of time. It is recommended to establish a plait only in case of explicit arterial bleeding. If you are not sure that you will manage to make it correctly, it is better to apply a compressing bandage, to close a wound a dense fabric tampon or just to press the place of bleeding fingers;
• Inept installation of tires. Many consider that the broken extremity before an attachment to the tire should be straightened by all means. This delusion brings a lot of excess trouble upon doctors and tortures to their patients. At violent straightening of the broken leg or hand bone fragments are most often combined incorrectly. The correct splinting assumes fixation of an extremity in situation, halfbent, convenient for the victim;
• Extraction from wounds of large objects. Such actions are possible only in the conditions of the operating room. The attempt to take out from a wound a knife or a big fragment of glass directly on site can lead incidents to massive blood loss and even the death of the victim;
• Blows in a back of the choked person. "Help" at the same time either is absolutely useless, or forces the piece of food which got stuck in a throat to get further away into respiratory tracts. In such situation the rescuer has to clasp the victim behind and do sharp pressing by both hands on area of an abdominal brain;
• The Zaprokidyvany heads for the termination of nasal bleeding. Such situation not only does not help, but also promotes blood flowing in respiratory tracts. If the person has blood from a nose, it should hold the head inclined forward;
• Greasing of burns fat. The fabrics damaged by high temperature need immediate cooling. It is the most correct to substitute an affected area of a body under cold flowing water not less than for 20 minutes, or to put to it the ice wrapped in a pure rag. Greasing by fat leads to the fact that fabrics continue to overheat and collapse. Similar action is made by attempts to wipe the freezed extremities of snow when they have to be thawed in warm water;
• "Disinfecting" of open wounds tincture of iodine, brilliant green or other alcohol-containing liquids. Similar receptions lead to burns of the injured fabrics and complicate process of their healing;
• Mortgaging of firm objects in a mouth to the epileptic at the time of an attack. It becomes, proceeding from fear that during an attack of the patient will bite to himself tongue. Actually such event is improbable that cannot be told about damage by firm objects or their fragments of soft tissues of an oral cavity and even throat, bronchial tubes and a gullet, and also teeth. To secure the epileptic against injuries during an attack it is enough to hold his extremities and the head, and upon termination of an attack to turn the patient sideways;
• Reposition of dislocations. To distinguish such injury from any other (a fracture or a bruise), it is necessary to have professional experience and the diagnostic equipment. And the procedure has to be performed by the person who did it repeatedly;
• Unreasonable use of drugs. To give to the victim any drugs, being based only on external symptoms of an illness, very dangerously. Diagnosis has to precede purpose of medicinal therapy. Also such actions as use of alcohol as anesthetic or the warming means are absolutely unacceptable;
• Provoking of vomiting at poisoning with unknown substances. If caustic liquid (acid or alkali) got into a stomach of the victim, the attempt to bring them by means of vomiting will lead to an additional burn of a gullet and oral cavity. At other poisonings it is possible to cause vomiting. For this purpose it is necessary to suggest the patient to drink several glasses of warm water and to press two fingers on a language root;
• Inept holding cardiorespiratory actions. To perform CPR, possessing only vague ideas of it, quite dangerously. Especially, is not necessary, without having experience, to apply such methods as blow in a breast for the purpose of heartbeat recovery.

Competent and responsible rendering the pre-medical help

All school students of our country regularly visit lessons Fundamentals of Health and Safety, but noticeable results of these occupations in most cases are not observed. Business here not only that the gained knowledge is academic. It is not less essential that our fellow citizens, as a rule, have no clear idea of what is necessary and what cannot be done at all, having faced need to help other person.

The duty of each citizen to save victims is fixed in many countries legislatively. For example, in France, Japan and Israel the passerby who did not call in time the ambulance can undergo criminal prosecution. Ability is competent to give pre-medical help in Germany is an indispensable condition of obtaining the driving license. At the same time the citizen who was honestly trying to save the person is exempted from liability even if his actions did harm. Similar situation is one of the main postulates of "The law of the kind Samaritan" acting in the USA. In Russia of the similar legislative base does not exist, but it is necessary to have some idea of the actions in critical situation nevertheless.

So, if you had a need of rendering the pre-medical help to someone, you have to:

1. To organize a call of specialists of service of rescue and physicians;
2. To learn whether is not present among surrounding doctors and to call them to the aid;
3. To estimate own knowledge and skills and to correlate them to real danger to the victim's life. It means, for example, what to try to hold cardiorespiratory events in the absence of experience is necessary if the victim does not breathe, he does not probe pulse etc.;
4. To try to eliminate the factors worsening a condition of the person without touching it from the place. It is possible to transfer the victim only in very dangerous situation, for example, if he is in the lit-up car;
5. To stop arterial bleeding, whenever possible, without use of a plait. At an applying a tourniquet it is reliable to fix a note with the indication of time (it is allowed to write it directly on skin);
6. To close bandages open wounds in order to avoid their pollution;
7. It is convenient to record the broken extremities;
8. To talk to the victim, to try to calm him before arrival of physicians.

Helping the person who got into a difficult situation it is worth to remember also about own safety. In critical situation important not only to save the victim, but also to soberly estimate the opportunities not to create danger to own life.

Rendering the pre-medical help is a debt of each citizen, but it needs to be done competently, reasonably estimating the opportunities and moral responsibility for effects. In this sense not only theoretical acquaintance with rules of conduct in emergency situations, but also visit of several practical training (for example, on the basis of civil defense and emergency) for the purpose of obtaining necessary skills can become very useful.