Preparing to give first aid

This is a very short one today, but I think it is important. Recently a contact on Twitter was posting pictures from his old first aid manual from 1971. Some of the information is still good, and still how we do things, but others seem a bit outdated. Mainly it was fun for the pictures.

Then today in Parade, there was a quiz on first aid, and I did pretty well on it, but there are some where the wrong response seems similar enough to the correct response that it could seem like a valid thing to do. It was also a reminder that even though there are things that I have always known were wrong, there are people who have believed it was correct, like putting butter on burns. That is a bad thing to do. It won't help, and can actually make the burn worse, but I know someone whose father did it when she was burned, and it was even suggested in a fiction book. The character did not put the butter on, but the book did not point out how bad of an idea it was.

Sometimes this is because we learn by doing, and our knowledge evolves over time. We know how to do CPR better now than we did twenty years ago, though it still saved lives then. Sometimes it's just that people get ideas that may seem instinctive and logical, but are wrong. That would include the butter, and also the very natural instinct to remove a sharp object that is stuck in a person. It has injured them, so is bad; removal feels logical. It just also may really start the blood gushing.

Also, no matter how often we have updated training, we don't use these skills a lot, and we can forget. I think I have had to use direct pressure to stop bleeding once, and even then the amount of blood coming out was small. I have never given CPR.

So this is just a reminder to refresh those skills, so that when something does come up you can make the situation better instead of worse. And starting with the Red Cross makes a lot of sense:

http://www.redcross.org/lp/american-red-cross-first-aid-training-courses?