Ten Principles of First Aid

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I thought it might be worth sharing some stuff from my recently published Preppers First Aid Manual. I applied my Ten Principles of Survival specifically to first aid at the end of the book. I can't fit all ten here so I am just including a few.

Ten Principles of First Aid

1. Anticipate


One a primary level, anticipation of the need to be able to render first aid in an emergency has driven your quest for knowledge and skill. Anticipation has opened your mind to the potential of injury and illness when you may be the first responder or even the only responder. You are taking responsibility in anticipation of the need, by learning skills, and acquiring equipment. Your life or the life of others may be saved because you anticipated the possibility, prepared and were able to act. What kinds of medical emergencies you anticipate depends on your age, location, health, and life situation. Unfortunately, natural disasters, civil unrest, violent crime, and terrorism must be added to home accidents, and normal illnesses as sources of medical emergencies we can anticipate.

On a more immediate level, the first aider must know how to anticipate the kinds of developments that a given type of injury or illness will create. You will need to anticipate the development of shock in a patient who has lost a lot of blood. You need to anticipate a declining level of consciousness for a head injury patient. In many cases you will need to anticipate a heart attack or other serious development before it occurs and initiate transportation to professional care. You can anticipate the development of hypothermia or hyperthermia from early signs and symptoms and prevent the development of these life threatening conditions.

2. Be Aware

Scene safety is the first step in responding to any emergency. Awareness of the environment and dangers are essential to keeping you from becoming just another victim. Confined spaces may hold toxic gases, or be oxygen deficient. Street situations may involve armed criminals. A “bystander” may in fact be the assailant. In a natural disaster or accident, down electric lines, leaking flammables, and unstable structures or vehicles may pose a hazard to the responder. Being aware of the hazards posed by communicable diseases, and hazardous chemicals is critical to assuring that you wear the proper respiratory, eye, and skin protection.

Being aware requires that you avoid “tunnel vision” on the first or most spectacular victim you encounter. A screaming thrashing victim has an airway and a high level of consciousness, where as a silent victim behind that door you came in, or on the other side of the vehicle may need immediate action to restore breathing or stop severe bleeding.



10. Do What is Necessary

This is an essential principle because responding to medical emergencies under survival conditions can involve some unpleasant situations and hard decisions. For starters, you may find yourself working in blood, vomit, urine, and other unpleasant substances. EMT’s carry mouth wash in their kits because patients often vomit causing the EMT to vomit as well. You may have to be firm with patents and bystanders in order to perform the necessary procedures. While patent comfort is desirable, splinting, bandaging and other actions may cause them some pain and complaints. Do what you must do. In multiple injury scenarios, you may need to ignore a non-critical, screaming patent or even a child in order to performed lifesaving action on another patient. In the gravest extreme you may be required triage patients, and even decide that one or more patients cannot be saved and move on to critical but salvageable patients. Do what you have to do.

11. Never Give Up
In addition to the ten principles there always has to be one overreaching rule. While triage may determine that you prioritize care to the most salvageable patients, most cases will involve only a few patients and permit some level of comfort care for even the most severely injured and terminal patients. Obviously massive and multiple injuries to the head, or torso are seldom survivable, but the human body is capable of amazing things. In the eighteen hundreds a trapper had his gut torn open and was left in the woods to die. Many days later he walked into Fort Michilimackinac in Michigan with a healed open stomach. A Physician there used him to study how food is digested. A woman in Tennessee rode to the doctor with a softball size tumor in her abdomen. The doctor remove it without anesthetics or antibiotics, she rode home on a horse and lived a long life. People have recovered from severe hypothermia where their body temperature were in the 60’s engendering the medical paradigm that “no one is dead until they are warm dead”. A girl in Pakistan was shot in the head, at close range with an AK47 and lived to address the UN. Do your best. Do what you can for everyone. Have faith and hope for the best.
 

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