Daily Dose of Common Sense

If you’re a parent, do you know what to do in an emergency? For example, your child has a pulse but isn’t breathing. What do you do? It’s lunchtime and your daughter suddenly chokes on a small piece of food. Do you know the correct technique to save her life? If your child is unresponsive and requires CPR, did you know that calling 911 isn’t the recommended first response?

In children however, a child who collapses to the ground and requires CPR does so most likely not from an arrhythmia but from respiratory arrest. Brain damage from lack of oxygen occurs in less than 4 minutes and death shortly thereafter, therefore the American Heart Association’s recommendation for children in need of CPR is to CALL FAST. Give 2 minutes of CPR before calling 911.

I took an infant/child CPR class at our local YMCA and am now fairly confident in my abilities to properly handle a situation should disaster strike. However, not everyone can sacrifice three hours in the middle of the week to get certified in CPR. If you are too busy, consider this online training course offered by the American Red Cross. It’s $55, but seems money well spent. There is instruction, a test, and a skill session all to reinforce the information.

If you need more hand-on training, the American Heart Association sells a Family & Friends CPR Anytime personal learning kit for home use, which includes a mini-CPR mannequin and DVD instruction. It’s under $30 and while you won’t earn certification, you might learn how to save someone’s life.

06/09/09: UPDATE

Just saw this post on AmericanHeart.org: Mother Uses Infant CPR to Save Her Son. It’s so important to learn CPR, especially if you’re a caregiver.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Family, Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.