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Why You Should Get Your First Aid, CPR, and AED Certifications

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Hey everybody, Legend again, and this week I’m going to be talking about why you should get your First Aid, CPR, and AED certifications.  I'm in San Diego, USA this week, so Mr.Kurd will be posting this for me.  As a Sports Medicine aide, I was required to have my First Aid, and for next year I am going to be getting my Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation and Automated External Defibrillator (CPR and AED) certifications.

First aid is defined in the Mirriam Webster Dictionary as “emergency care or treatment given to an ill or injured person before regular medical aid can be obtained.”  It basically means that if you see a person having a medical emergency, you should be able to keep them stable or stabilize them until more professional medical personnel arrive (normally in a situation where first aid knowledge is necessary, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT’s) and Paramedics will be the next person to help).  So, if you see a person having a heart attack, allergic reaction, or an amputation, then you should be able to stabilize them until help arrives.  I’ll run through a situation that we went through in my first aid course.  Your friend is in the backyard mowing the lawn, and somehow gets his finger trapped in the lawn mower and it becomes severed.  Your response should be to cover the immediate area and try to stop the bleeding.  Attempt to get the person to lie down and rest for a second (this slows heart rate and keeps blood from pushing to the wound as quickly) while you search for the severed finger.  When found, place the finger in a plastic baggie full of ice (cover the finger first in another ziplock or surround it with tissues or paper towels to avoid nerve damage because of frostbite).  Call 911 or drive to the hospital while keeping the wound covered.  This situation shows how first aid is immediately rendered to keep the patient stable while attempting to get to professional medical personnel.

Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation, or CPR, is defined as “a medical procedure involving repeated compression of a patient's chest, performed in an attempt to restore the blood circulation and breathing of a person who has suffered cardiac arrest.”  CPR is known by all fields of medicine, from CNAs to Neurosurgeons.  Here’s a story we heard in my first aid class where CPR was necessary.  A young woman was walking home from school when she saw a large crowd of people surrounding a certain area.  When she approached, she saw that an elderly man was unconscious on the ground.  He had no pulse and was not breathing.  She began compressions (pushing on the chest at 100 BPM to push blood through the heart) and rescue breaths (breathing for a person by exhaling into their mouth at every 30th compression) until an AED became available, then monitored the AED and did compressions as necessary until paramedics arrived.  This situation shows the application of Automatic External Defibrillators and CPR in a real-world setting.  A quick note: AED’s do not shock a person unless there is a lack of pulse.  You could attach an AED to a perfectly healthy person and nothing would happen. This makes them perfectly safe and user-friendly.

Now to why you should get your First Aid, CPR and AED certifications.  As a person looking to get a job, even in a non-medical career field, employers like seeing that a person can provide medical support to a co-worker or customer in an emergency, and it also helps companies that require first aid classes for their employees, such as offices and especially places like shopping centers and restaurants.  Some employers will pay more to people who have these skills, for example, if a person begins choking in a restaurant, the owner would rather have a waiter/waitress who can do the Heimlich maneuver then an employee who would just stand there hoping someone else knows what to do.

So, in conclusion, you should get your certifications.  It helps when you’re searching for a job, it may get you a bigger paycheck, and the knowledge that you can help someone who needs it is a great feeling to have.  Go down to your local hospital and ask where and when you can get certified.  It may cost you a couple hundred in some cases (to get your First Aid in my area is about $40 at a certain hospital), but it is very worth it in the long run.

Thanks for reading
I am Legend
We are Legion
We do not Forgive
We do not Forget
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Nice thread, keep it up.
It's good to have First Aid on CV as well.
Rs
* Thankful to Allah *
Kurdy



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