Hi folks,

Are your skills up to snuff?  Performing chest compressions takes strength and speed.  The rescuer needs to compress 1/2 the depth of the chest in order to profuse blood from the heart through the lungs and to the brain etc.  Are you compressing this depth on Annie?  Remember, anatomically, the heart lies in the center/left area of the chest.  If another rescuer arrives, they should feel a good pulse at the neck of the victim if you are compressing deep enough!  If they do, good for you! 

This is just one of the situations that a student taking CPR education will learn from our instructors.  It’s important to be a clear and knowledgeable instructor, we’ve been at cardiac arrest scenes, we’ve done the CPR, we’ve cried afterward with the family…we care.  This is why we train! 

At American CPR & Safety, Inc. our instructors are also refreshed with every new subject matter that arrives through American Heart and the American Medical Association. 

Fire officials are spreading the word on the dangers of burn injuries. Burn Awareness Week, observed the first full week in February, is designed to provide an opportunity for burn, fire and life safety educators to unite in sharing a common burn awareness and prevention message in our communities.  It’s a good thing too, because nationwide, an estimated 40,000 people and 10,000 kids suffer severe burn injuries – 4,000 of which die, according to the American Burn Association.* How prepared are you to protect the people in your organization if a severe burn situation were to happen?  

On another note!

Questions have risen regarding our Good Samaritan Law, which should cover our good hearted citizens that arrive first on a scene to render first aid and/or CPR to another citizen.  Read on…….. 

From Division 2.5 of the California Health and Safety Code: 1799.102. No person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission. The scene of an emergency shall not include emergency departments and other places where medical care is usually offered.According to the ruling, the existence of the word “medical” in the last sentence, and the statute’s location near other sections regarding emergency medical services means that only medical care is covered by the law.  Why is that important? Because of the court’s decision that moving a victim to a safer location is not medical care. From the decision, written by Justice H. Walter Croskey: “There may be circumstances in which moving someone from their current location is a matter of medical exigency, such as where a carbon monoxide poisoning victim needs to be moved to a source of fresh air. We do not hold that the act of moving a person is never the rendition of emergency medical care, only that it was not in this case.”

The problem with this thinking is that untrained rescuers – the very population this law is intended to protect – are supposed to make a determination as to whether the care they are rendering is medical in nature in order to benefit from Good Samaritan protection.

This subject will be creating havok in the first aid class, where, the instructor is educating students on how to stabilize the victims head.  Should we be doing this act then??  This is NOT giving medical care, it’s stabilization!  What if the victim is face down in a puddle of mud and cannot breath?  Will we be back 20 years or so, saying….”don’t move him/her you might break the neck!”  I’m not sure how you might be feeling right now, I’m preturbed by this.  We(americans) just can’t seem to move forward from our “babe in the woods” mentality.  Take a trip to France, Germany or most of europe and you won’t be hearing a court case like this one!

I would like to know if EMS personel had rendered care to this person, that she wouldn’t end up like this anyway?  AND..would there be a law suit then, or would it be written that she suffered her paralysis from the accident alone?  HUM.  Just a thought.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, I’m sure many others would too!  Tag, you’re it!  Comments!

Stay safe and happy, and may our Heart month mean those of you who are smoking will quit and become healthier!

Shannon Madden

Check out Minnesota’s Law..

http://law.justia.com/minnesota/codes/595/604a-s01.html