CPR Basics for Health Care Providers
I love watching hospital shows on television. The actors portraying doctors and nurses have experts on set to help them with lines, and techniques for saving people’s lives. If emergency situations in everyday life were that easy, if you had a coach nearby to walk you through a procedure, how great would that be? Luckily, health care providers do have experts nearby to assist when things go wrong. And nothing is worse than cardiac arrest!
That’s where CPR training and certification comes in. Healthcare providers are on the front line in saving lives and need to be prepared for any emergency. CPR is performed until more qualified personal arrive to assist in the next lifesaving step, which can include defibrillation or all the way up to surgery.
The Basic CPR steps for health care personnel are the same as the layperson. A health care provider will first ask the victim if they are okay or attempt to wake them. They may rub a knuckle across their sternum to get a response. If the victim fails to respond, the health care practitioner will hit a call button on the wall, which is the equivalent of calling 911.
You’ve seen them scramble on television, probably calling out “Code Blue!” That’s 911 emergency showing up to help or at least the hospital equivalent of it.
The next step for the health provider is to access the condition. They check breathing and pulse. If they can’t detect breath, they blow two quick breathes into the lungs, sometimes using a respirator and begin chest compressions.
They press down on the sternum hard for thirty compressions, then give two more breaths and repeat. In a hospital or health facility setting, help is usually not too far away so the health care provider will not be working alone, or for too long. However, those first few moments in the emergency situation are critical to control any long lasting damage due to oxygen deprivation or no circulation in the body.
Health care providers need to stay current on their CPR certification and training, and a simple way to do that is through online courses, like those available at www.cprcare.com. Qualified and efficient up to the date training methods are taught by expert instructors to keep health care practitioners ready for any emergency.
