First aid: instructions, rules, types

The situation when an accident happened before our eyes with someone around us can occur at any moment. Not each of us immediately rushes to the aid of a stranger, although sometimes human life depends on the provision of first aid. The irony of fate is that we ourselves may be in the place of the injured tomorrow. Therefore, you always need to be involved, humanity, and not try to quickly slip past. But just getting close to those in need is not enough. You need to know what to do in each specific situation. Of course, the first thing to do is to call an ambulance. Our article is about how to provide first aid to victims before the arrival of a team of doctors.

Types of incidents

Our life is multifaceted. It offers hundreds of opportunities for interesting leisure activities in winter and summer. Going on a hike or to the beach, no one expects disaster. However, anything can happen.

Unforeseen situations await us not only on vacation. On city streets, you can also witness unpleasant incidents with passers-by.

No matter what happens, you can’t lose your head and panic. The victim does not need your tears, but help. It is different, it all depends on what, in fact, happened. We list some of the most common life-threatening situations:

• Drowning.
• Electric shock.
• Frostbite.
• Getting burns.
• Carbon monoxide poisoning.
• Wound.
• Fractures.
• Bites of snakes and insects.
• Mushroom poisoning.

Some of the above situations often occur in the workplace. The Labor Code of the Russian Federation (Articles 212 and 225) instruct employers to conduct first-aid training for employees. The schedule and plan of such events must be drawn up without fail. Consider how to act in the above situations.

Electric shock

Such a misfortune can happen for two reasons:

• Household or work injury.
• Natural phenomenon (lightning strike).

In case of electric shock of great strength, the victim has:

• Dizziness.
• Cramps.
• Loss of consciousness.
• Heart failure.
• Blue skin.

On his body, as a rule, wounds should remain in places of contact with the bare wire.

First aid for electric shock involves the following algorithm of actions:

1. Unplug the source of injury. If this cannot be done, cut the wire (for example, with an ax) or discard it with rubber gloves on your hand. If this cannot be done, the victim must be dragged away from the site of the injury, not by the hands or other parts of the body.
2. If the unfortunate one is conscious, they lay him on the ground (floor), lubricate the wounds with an antiseptic, give him “Analgin” and a solution of valerian (30 drops per 100 ml of water) and wait for the doctors to arrive.
3. If a person is unconscious, but there is a pulse, the patient is laid on the floor, undoes squeezing clothes, cover, give a smell of ammonia.
4. If the victim does not breathe, they immediately receive indirect heart massage, alternating with inhaling air “mouth to mouth”. If his jaw is cramped with spasm, breathing is done "mouth to nose."

Arriving doctors must begin resuscitation on the spot using special equipment.

Drowning

Similar situations occur while resting on the water. If you have the opportunity to help a person get ashore, you should clearly know the following rules:

• It is necessary to swim to the drowning person only from behind, otherwise he will drown himself and drown his rescuer.
• It is necessary to grab the victim by the hair, and if there is none, then by the neck.
• If a drowning man clings to a lifeguard and pulls him to the bottom, you need to dive. The unfortunate hands will unclench instinctively.

Having pulled a person ashore, it is necessary to visually assess his condition.

If the victim has bluish skin, and bloody foam comes out of his mouth and nose, it means that a large amount of water got into his stomach, and from there into the blood.

If the victim's skin color is pale, then a spasm has occurred in the larynx and the water has not entered.

In any case, first aid is immediately provided to the victim. Remember, you only have 3-5 minutes to save his life.

First, a pale and cyanotic person needs to very quickly clean his mouth (nose) from algae and other similar objects. Further, the algorithm for dealing with cyanotic victims is as follows:

1. Turn it face down.
2. Place his belly on your knee.
3. Put your fingers in his mouth and put pressure on the root of the tongue (try to induce vomiting). If this happened - great. This means that a person with your help can cleanse his stomach of the fluid that has accumulated there. Vomiting needs to be stimulated many times until no more water is released. The victim should begin to cough. If he breathes, it must be laid on either side, covered.
4. If vomiting did not work, then all the water has already been absorbed into the blood, the stomach is empty. Do not despair if your saved has not begun to breathe. Quickly lay it on your back and proceed with an indirect heart massage. On his chest in the region of the heart, you need to put your two hands (one on the other) and begin strong and rhythmic pressing. There should be about 60 per minute.
5. At the same time, air is inhaled into a person’s mouth or nose. It is best to combine items 4 and 5, performing 5-7 clicks, then inhaling air, pressing again.

If the skin of the rescued is initially pale, there is no point in causing him to vomit. He needs to immediately begin indirect heart massage and artificial respiration.

If the first pre-medical care is provided on time and correctly, the person should begin to breathe. It is laid on its side, covered. Arriving doctors must necessarily examine and take the patient to the hospital for testing, because after drowning, even if everything ended well, death can occur suddenly in a couple of hours or even days.

Frostbite

You are mistaken if you think that this happens only with those who went to the forest for a Christmas tree or with inveterate fishermen freezing to the ice near the hole. Frostbite can happen to anyone who has spent a lot of time in the cold. You can freeze even at zero degrees, being dressed not according to the weather. Initial symptoms:

• Blanching of the skin.
• Decrease in her sensitivity.

In the future, the following symptoms appear on the affected areas:

• 1 degree. Soreness of the skin, but no necrosis. After warming, the skin turns red. Puffiness and peeling may appear on it. You need to grind the sore spot with a woolen mitt or hand (not snow), perform any movements of the affected limb or fingers.
• 2 degree. In the frost-bitten areas during the first two days blisters with transparent exudate appear, pain, itching, burning are observed.
• 3 degree. Frostbite skin necrosis occurs. There is no sensitivity in it. After warming, blisters with bloody exudate appear on it. Later, wounds form in their place. The nail plate dies.
• 4 degree. Necrosis of both the skin and the area under it. Affected areas become cyanotic, swell, gangrene develops in these places.

In the last three cases, first aid for frostbite is as follows:

1. Transfer a person to heat.
2. If he is in wet clothes, you need to remove it, get your skin wet, wrap the victim in blankets.
3. If there are blisters on the skin, sterile bandages are applied to them.

That’s all you need to do before the doctors arrive.

If the situation is such that you don’t have to wait for doctors, first aid should consist of the following actions:

1. Place a frostbitten limb in a bowl of water at a temperature of +18 ° C.
2. Very slowly (in about half an hour) bring it to +37 ° C.
3. Remove the limb from the water, pat it dry with a cloth, wrap it in something warm.
4. Drink the patient with hot milk or tea.
5. Give a drink an analgesic.

Getting burns

These skin injuries are thermal (from fire or something hot), chemical, radiation and electrical. The types of first aid are different.

All burns according to the degree of intensity are divided into degrees:

• I - only redness on the skin.
• II - redness plus a blister filled with clear exudate.
• III - blackening of burned skin, necrosis of these areas.
• IV - necrosis of a burned area and tissues (sometimes even bones) under it.

The first stage and the second are considered easy. First aid for burns without skin necrosis consists of the following actions:

1. Remove clothing if necessary. Place the sore spot under running water and keep it for at least 15 minutes.
2. Treat with "Panthenol" or its analogue. You can use alcohol. Do not use ointments and iodine.
3. Apply a light gauze bandage to the injured area. It should not be tight. It is not advisable to use cotton wool.
4. To relieve pain, give the victim "Analgin", "Nimesil" or another analgesic.

Third and fourth degrees Diagnosed as severe. The first aid instruction in this case is as follows:

1. Carefully remove smoldering (burning) shreds of clothing. Do not touch the rest.
2. Cover the wound surface with a sterile or at least clean cloth. It can be moisturized.
3. Place the patient so that the burned parts are above the area of ​​the heart.
4. Give a person to drink warm tea or a solution of soda with salt (water 1000 ml, salt 3 g, soda 2 g).

Chemical burns are obtained by contact with the skin of caustic substances - acids, alkalis, quicklime.

If acids (except sulfuric) get on the skin, it is necessary:

• Rinse the affected area for a long time under running water.
• To process the skin with a solution of soda (a pinch in a glass of water) or a solution of laundry soap.
• In case of burns with sulfuric acid, treat the area with a solution of soda. Do not rinse with water!

If alkali enters the skin, it is necessary:

• Rinse the affected area for a long time under running water.
• Treat the skin with a solution of vinegar (spoon in a glass of water).

If quicklime soda gets, it is necessary to lubricate the skin with any fat.

In chemical laboratories, there are cases when inexperienced employees, when conducting certain studies, acid or alkali enter the body. If this happens, you must immediately start flushing the stomach with plenty of water (up to 10 liters). If acid gets inside, add soda to the water. If alkali - vinegar or lemon juice.

Carbon monoxide poisoning

This often happens in private houses with stove heating, in hazardous industries, as well as in fires, if smoldering objects are observed. This misfortune also does not bypass drivers in whose vehicles catalytic afterburners are not installed. Poisoning can be mild, moderate and severe. In the first case, a person has:

• Headache of high intensity.
• Noise in ears.
• Vomiting
• Visual impairment.
• Dry cough.
• Difficulty breathing.

With these symptoms, first aid to employees is to immediately provide fresh air to the room. A person needs to be taken outside, given a cup of coffee or strong tea. The same thing needs to be done for carbon monoxide poisoning at home.

In the second case, the signs of poisoning are:

• Stupid state, prostration, short-term loss of consciousness.
• Vomiting
• Dyspnea.
• Difficulty breathing.
• Tachycardia.
• Cramps.
• Icon extension.
• Hallucinations.
• Stunned.
• "Flies" before the eyes.
• Hyperemia of the skin.

In this condition, the first medical aid at work or at home before the arrival of doctors is that the victim must be taken outside. If a person is unconscious, give him sniff ammonia, intensively rub the limbs, chest, face.

With severe poisoning, there are:

• Loss of consciousness.
• Cramps.
• Paralysis.
• Filamentous pulse.
• Involuntary bowel movements and urination.
• Intermittent breathing.

The victim must be taken out into the air and resuscitation measures should begin immediately. Only professionals - resuscitators can help here.

Wound

In everyday life, injuries with violation of the skin are received when falling from a height, during an accident, in a fight, at work when working with certain types of equipment. The nature of the wounds is most often cut or stabbed.

When providing first aid, there is an unshakable rule - before the arrival of doctors it is impossible to remove objects that are present in them from injured areas of the body, for example, a knife, a sticking pin (armature), and so on.

In case of injuries, first aid is to stop bleeding, treat a damaged surface, and relieve pain. The action algorithm should be as follows:

1. If veins or arteries are damaged, which can be understood by the amount of blood flowing out, the first thing you need to do is to press the injured vessel of the victim to the bone above the injury site with your thumb.
2. If blood spurts from the fountain, first aid for bleeding of such intensity is to apply a tourniquet to the damaged artery or vein above the site of injury. Duration of application is no more than two hours. The tourniquet can be made from any improvised items - a belt, scarf, torn into pieces of clothing.
3. Position the victim so that the injured area is higher than the rest of the body (raise a wounded arm or leg).
4. Treat the skin around the wound with an antiseptic (iodine, alcohol, vodka).
5. Apply a clean (preferably sterile) dressing to the wound.
6. Give the victim an analgesic, and with strong nervous excitement, a sedative, for example, tincture of valerian.

If it so happened that the insides fell out of the peritoneum, they cannot be set! In this case, all that can be done before the doctors arrive is to cover them with a sterile napkin and not bandage the stomach too tightly. It is forbidden to give a person anything to drink!

A gunshot wound in our time can be obtained on the hunt. First aid for bleeding in this case is similar to that discussed above. It should be noted that it is impossible to tear off blood-soaked clothing from a wound, remove a bullet from the body, wash the wound with water, alcohol, sprinkle it with gunpowder, ash or earth. All that is required of the poor fellow’s comrades is to stop the bleeding and treat the injured area with an antiseptic.

First aid for fractures

This is the most common type of injury that occurs in everyday life, at work, and on vacation. The number of such cases increases in winter in ice. First aid training for such injuries is provided at the school in the 4th grade. From these classes, we learn that fractures are open (there is a rupture of the skin) and closed. Consider the actions that must be taken with each of them.

Closed fracture of fingers or hands. With this injury, it makes no sense to call an ambulance. It is required to fix the limb of the victim, for example, using a scarf. If you have the skills, you can impose a splint on a damaged limb. Any hard object (piece of wood, plank, thick stick) can play its role. The splint is applied to the arm so that it spans two joints along both sides of the fracture. Then she wraps herself around the arm with bandages. This is done to immobilize a damaged limb. If necessary, you can give the person a painkiller and deliver him to the emergency room.

Closed leg fracture. If the trouble happened at home, the actions are:

• Arrange the injured on the surface (floor, ground) so that the pain syndrome is felt to the least extent.
• To shelter.
• Give an analgesic and sedative.
• Wait for the ambulance.

Open fracture. First aid instructions look like this:

• Release the injured area from clothing (if it is not possible to remove, then cut it, tear it).
• Stop bleeding in one of the ways described above.
• Treat the wound with an antiseptic.
• To provide the victim with peace and immobilization of the injured limb. If the trouble happened in a place where the ambulance can get there quickly (for example, at home), there is no need to put the tire on your own, because your unprofessional actions will exacerbate the consequences of the fracture. All that is required of you is to be near the victim, give him a sedative and pain medication, make sure that he does not try to move.

If a person with a fractured limb is unconscious, he needs to be allowed to smell ammonia. For lack of it, you can try to bring to life a pat on the cheeks. If necessary, you need to start an indirect heart massage and artificial respiration.

If the injury occurred far from civilization (for example, in the forest), first aid for fractures is somewhat different.

Consider the case when there are several healthy adults next to the victim. In this case, the comrades must deliver the person to the nearest settlement, where they must call the ambulance. The patient can be transported only with reliable fixation of the fracture site, regardless of whether it is closed or open.

When closed, try to put a splint on the injured limb. You can use thick sticks, and take clothes torn into strips as a bandage.

If there are no suitable materials for the tire, the injured leg is securely wound to a healthy one, and the hand to the body.

If the fracture is open, the following steps:

• It is imperative to stop bleeding by applying a tourniquet.
• Treat the wound with any of the antiseptics on hand (vodka, cologne).
• If there is clean tissue, cover it with a wound.
• Immobilize a limb by laying a splint on it.

It is best to transport the patient on an improvised stretcher. You can use a blanket attached to sticks. As a last resort, stretchers can be made from branches.

If there are no people nearby who can transport him, he needs to be given the same first aid as described above. Next, arrange the patient more comfortable on earth. Leave him water and weapons (if any) in case of the appearance of dangerous animals and quickly go for help.

The most severe injury in this category is a spinal fracture. Most often, such a misfortune happens when practicing extreme sports or in an accident. The rules of first aid in this case are as follows: the first thing to do is to make sure that the victim is breathing. If not, it is necessary to examine his mouth for vomit, remove them and begin artificial respiration and indirect heart massage.

Having achieved the restoration of respiratory function, the patient must ensure absolute peace. It can not be turned over, planted, raised his head. If there is no possibility of the ambulance arriving at the scene, transportation of the patient is required. It should be performed by at least 3 people - two will hold the front and back of the stretcher, and the third - the victim’s head. It should be motionless. A person must be fixed for transportation extremely carefully. At least two tires must match the height of his body. They are placed under the back of the patient left and right. Shorter tires are also perpendicularly fixed from the back in the region of the legs, lower back, chest and cervical regions. All this is securely fixed with bandages. If the first-aid kit was in the hands of the rescuers, the victim can be injected with an analgesic and a corticosteroid (“Hydrocortisone”).

Snake and insect bites

If a bee stings, no one calls an ambulance. It is quite enough to remove the sting from the wound (with tweezers or nails), treat the place of the bite with an antiseptic, apply a bandage with soda gruel to the wound, or lubricate it with Fenistil. If necessary, you can drink an antihistamine. Most often, this is required for young children.

If the incident happened in nature, the wound can be lubricated with celandine juice or dandelion.

If the bite is in the mouth or throat, swelling of the larynx may occur leading to suffocation. In this case, the victim must be urgently taken to the first-aid post for the introduction of antidotes. If the situation is critical (a person begins to choke), he needs to insert any tube into his throat so that he can breathe.

If a more serious disaster happened - a bite of a poisonous snake, the sequence of first aid is as follows:

1. Call an ambulance.
2. The patient does not panic, but quickly lay on the ground.
3. Knead the wounds left by the snake and begin to suck out the poison, spitting it regularly. This procedure can only be performed if the lifeguard has no damage in his mouth. Otherwise, the poison will enter his bloodstream.
4. After 20 minutes of such actions, 50% of the poison injected by the snake will leave the body of the bitten. At this, suction can be stopped.
5. Treat the wound with an antiseptic.
6. Give a bitten bit of water. The more he drinks, the lower the concentration of poison.
7. If the person is in a coma, an indirect heart massage and artificial respiration are required.

Mushroom poisoning

The most poisonous fungus is pale toadstool. It is enough to eat one of her hat to poison herself deadly. Amanita, galleria, entoloma and other mushrooms are also dangerous. Therefore, they must be collected with great care. Signs of poisoning:

• Vomiting
• Headache.
• Diarrhea.
• Pain in the peritoneum.
• Salivation in large quantities.
• Lacrimation.
• Narrowing of the pupils.
• Bronchospasm.
• Bradycardia
• Cramps.
• Hallucinations.

In many cases, it is impossible to help a person, since the poison has already been absorbed from the intestines into the blood. What can be done before the ambulance arrives? First aid consists in removing food from his digestive tract. This is true if less than 8 hours have passed since the meal. The victim is vomited using large amounts of water. The procedure must be repeated many times. Then a person is put into bed, they are given a sorbent to drink, and they expect an ambulance.

If a lot of time has passed since the meal, you can try to save the person by letting him drink any sorbent: Polysorb, Enterosgel, Smecta, activated carbon. You can also give a weak solution of potassium permanganate to drink. The victim must be put to bed, sheltered.

If at home there is oak bark, as well as clover grass and horsetail, it is necessary to prepare a decoction and give it to the patient. The proportions of dry plants, respectively, 2: 5: 5. Take 3 tablespoons of the mixture per liter of boiling water. All this is quickly brought to a boil, turn off the fire, cool the broth, filter and give the patient to drink 100 ml. Next, doctors should take care of the person.

Conclusion

It is impossible to foresee and describe all situations. The main thing to take as a rule is never to pass by a person who needs help. Perhaps you will become for him the only angel-savior who will bring him back to life.