Thursday, May 01, 2008

Day 596: First Aid Course with Health Promoters

With the expertise of visiting medic Mark Bixby (Lib's pop), we offered two short first aid courses to adult and youth health promoters, as well as a few local health post staff. The best part were the simulations of real accidents where participants had to apply the skills they had just learned.

Here we are in the Health Post giving our introductory Power Point... The course included about 4 hours of classroom material and 6 hours of simulations.



Here Rosa and Miriam are examining the "bleeding" leg of Elsa... in the simulation Elsa was pretending to have been hit by a drunk driver in the shin, resulting in heavy bleeding and requiring that her "First Responders" apply well-aimed, direct pressure to the wound and continuously check her distal circulation and movement.

Our friend Edgar (our number 1 English student) fills out a SOAP note on his victim... Norma was pretending to have fallen off the roof when the drunk driver crashed into her ladder. She was discovered "unconscious" at the scene of the "accident."

Here the youth health promoters examine the "drunk driver" who had died on impact after being thrown 5 meters from his taxi after crashing into the ladder. The First Responders had to first assess scene safety, then check the major body systems (circulatory, respiratory and nervous) to determine a methodology for treatment. This patient was unconscious, had no pulse, and no respirations upon discovery.