Experiences of open classes on children's safety and first aid

Nip the foreseeable risks in the bud beforehand. When an accident occurs, don’t make blind operations to cause trouble. Do the most important thing in the prime time and leave the rest to professional doctors.

I was dragged to attend the class by the community grid staff last week. I was murmuring at first, thinking that after watching so many short videos, I could recite Heimlich and the steps for treating burns and scalds better than the multiplication tables. What was so good about it? Until Nurse Li, who was giving the lecture, the old nurse who had been in the pediatric emergency room for 12 years, started talking about a case she had just received last month, and I sat up straight in an instant. A 3-year-old boy had a jelly stuck in his throat. His mother had seen an emergency video and slapped him on the back. It took two minutes for the baby's face to turn purple before she remembered to call 120. When he was sent to the emergency room, the jelly had slipped deeper into his trachea. Although he was finally taken out, the lack of oxygen lasted too long, leaving irreversible brain damage. I had goosebumps at that time. The week before, I had just bought two bags of jelly for my 4-year-old baby. I even told my mother that I would pat her back if her throat was stuck. What I did was completely wrong?

Nurse Li said that there is a lot of quarrel on the Internet about how to deal with foreign objects stuck in the throat. Some people say that patting on the back is good, and sometimes they say patting on the back is wrong. In fact, both statements are correct, but they are applicable to different scenarios: according to the American Heart Association’s guidelines, infants under 1 year old are If a child has a foreign object stuck in the throat, pat the back 5 times and then press the chest 5 times alternately. Only use the Heimlich abdominal shock for conscious children over 1 year old. If the child has lost consciousness and is lying on the ground, don't use the Heimlich and perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation immediately. As for the rumors on the Internet about picking the throat with chopsticks and shaking the baby upside down, they are all wrong. The former may push the foreign object deeper, and the latter may injure the baby's cervical vertebra. Don't try it blindly.

Later on, I used a simulator to practice on the spot. I went up and punched the simulator's stomach. Nurse Li stopped me and said that my position of exerting force was too high and hit the stomach. When the foreign object did not come out, she first pushed out the contents of the baby's stomach and choked her. Moreover, the force was wrong. Instead of pushing hard slowly, she pushed up and inward quickly, as if she was trying to "lift" something out of the stomach. It took me three exercises to find the right feeling, and my palms were sweating. Only then did I realize that in an emergency, it would be difficult to keep my hands from shaking. Only the muscle memory that I had practiced in advance would be useful. By the way, the class also corrected a common sense that I had been wrong about for several years. When a child is burned or scalded, the first thing to do is not to apply toothpaste or soy sauce, but to run cold water for 15 to 20 minutes. In the past, I always thought that I would catch a cold if I showered for a long time. Nurse Li said that the risk of scarring or even infection is much greater than catching a cold, so don’t let the baby lose its weight.

I used to think that first aid was all about “remedial action after the fact.” Nurse Li said that 80% of the thousands of accidental injuries to children that they receive in the emergency department every year could have been avoided. For example, the baby I picked up last month suffered deep second-degree burns. When her grandma put the thermos cup she had just filled with boiling water at the table, and turned around to get a rag, the 2-year-old baby pulled the cup off by the tablecloth, and her whole chest was covered in blisters. "You think it only took you two seconds to turn around, but the baby's movements are much faster than yours." When I got home the same day after hearing this, I put all the hot water bottles, scissors, and pills on the dining table into a high cabinet. I used to think that my baby couldn't reach them, but now I think about it, it was really a fluke.

Some parents in the class asked, many people now say that the anti-lost rope is an IQ tax and a safety hazard. Should it not be used? Nurse Li did not directly give a standard answer, saying that there are currently two schools of thought in the industry: one group is dominated by child safety science bloggers, who believe that babies under 3 years old are very active. In crowded places such as stations and business districts, anti-lost ropes can prevent children from getting lost and the probability of being picked up is low; the other group is mostly emergency doctors. They have seen too many cases of children being dragged down by ropes when running around, and even causing injuries when the rope got stuck in the gap between the steps and dragged the baby down while riding the escalator. The final suggestion is also very practical: it can be used in open places with many people, but when taking the escalator, crossing the road, or walking up the stairs, don’t be lazy and just pick up the baby. The rope is only an aid, and your hands are the safest.

At the end of get out of class, I received a first aid kit issued by the community, which included hemostatic patches, burn ointment, and child safety guidelines. On the way home, I was still thinking that I used to think that this kind of open class was just a formality, but now I know that being able to expose those lucky spots that you usually don’t notice at all, and allowing you to operate without panic when something really happens, is better than anything else. After all, for us as parents, the best result of learning these things is that we will never use them in our lives, but when we really need to use them, we must be able to handle them.