shocking!!

today i had my work 1st aid course which is the medical level 6 one.
anyway . .
as with any 1 of the questions was . .

Q) if you are presented with a small child of infant that appears un-responsive what do you do to check that they are responsive or not

A) you pinch there inner arm. leg , side
(most people know it and it says so in the book)

CORRECT YES BUT . . . . .
(this is the bit that shocked the entire room)
before you pinch the child to check that they are un-responsive, you may want to check the time, and then make sure you get someone else in the room (other than the childs parent) to witness and doccument exactly when and where you pinch the child and for how long! as you may be open to a child abuse case!!
WTF!

i was so shocked at this! i thought it was absolutly rediculas! and surely even the thought of that will put some people off even checking the responce!
this has come about since somewhere in the south island a GP pinched a baby to check the responce ( there was none and the baby later died) but her nail left a tiny mark on the childs side and the parents took her to court!

PC gone way to far i think,

And there are lots of ridiculous things about the first aid stuff which are potentially life threatening.

As in, if I was with someone who had a severe allergic reaction and required an injection from an Epi pen but were unable to give it to themselves for whatever reason, I am legally unable to give that injection unless I have prior written consent from the person. Verbal consent is potentially acceptable if there is a third party to witness it.

Edited to fix is/are

Edited by nikkiwhyte

eeek what if there is no one else nearby? Pinch the kid! Pinch it!!! Better alive than waiting for another adult!!!! *panics*

Peanut... yeah, I assumed that. Just wanted clarification.

I was wondering if the difference in checking infant response is due to the provider (or trainer?) as I don't imagine it is a medical/non-medical thing.

Mine was a red cross course.

we have to cover all the totally freaky stuff like incubation with the little torch and tubes down the throat like on shorty st. and the shock pads etc . .

could be due to different service providers
our courses are thru SMS medical or amcare

(edited as i forgot the last bit)

Edited by CatzKids

Peanut wrote: Things really have gone mad though when someone will take someone else to court for trying to save their or their childs life....

I agree.

Though it isn't always that simple unfortunately.

meh , sometimes at work i half wish someone would suffer some kind of reaction to anesthetic or something, just for some damn excitement ...had one patient faint after she got her wisdom teeth out ...but she woke up again, bugger it !

really ? we havent had that *thinks for a bit* nope we havent
but.....my boss has a friend that was a dentist and had a patient (23 years old) go under GA ...and he never woke up ....

Im so bored of teeth Cat, im bored of the industry , been doing it too long , so repetitive now *sigh*

My best friend has a severe allergic reaction and carries an epipen. She has had a really hard time finding people in the office where she works that would be willing to give it to her if she needed it. One time she had a reaction and the 3 people that she had trained to give it to her, all stood around debating about who was going to do it, in that situation someone random in the office just stepped in and gave it to her. Pretty hard when you are depending on people to effectively save your life and they are too nervous to do the simple thing that they have been trained to do!!

(Funny side story - we were once in a really flash restaurant in London and she had a reaction, and one of the symptoms that something is wrong is that she gets really hot and starts to go bright red....and starts pulling on her clothes....well she collasped but slumped under the table....so her husband and I were on our hands and knees under a table in the middle of the busy restaurant hiking up her dress to stab her in the thigh.....it looked hilarious at the time!!)

 

How's this then?

My DH is trained to be a field medic in the army, can insert IV's etc etc. The way they are taught CPR can break someone's ribs (as CPR can do) yet they can be taken to court for breaking a person's ribs so are advised not to give CPR in the real world

Why would someone take you to court for breaking your ribs when you did CPR to save their life? Not that its likely to happen as CPR has such a low success rate but sheesh.

PC gone mad!