CPRMom

This past Monday morning I watched the news on TV. This is not something I usually have time for or will try to compete with the kids to watch the only TV in the house. But I did and I learned that the Northeast is the path of a hurricane. This is news. Usually here in NH we just get the aftermath after the hurricane is downgraded to a tropical storm or even less severe. A few hours later I found out there was an earthquake a few hundred miles south of us. So as I'm thinking about Hurricanes and Earthquakes I began to think about Zombies. Yup, Zombies. What do Zombies have to do with Earthquakes and Hurricanes? The folks at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention put together a really neat guide on how to survive a zombie apocalypse. Remember a while back the world was supposed to end or we were going to be overrun by zombies? Well the folks at the CDC wanted to make sure we were prepared and created a really good guide on how we could do that. Coinciden...

I had several good questions about DNR aka Do Not Resuscitate orders in some classes a few months ago, and recently there has been a very interesting legal discussion on them in one of the Instructors Forums I belong to. A DNR order is a legal document signed by a patient's physician that states that in the event of a life-ending situation, life-saving measures should not be initiated. This means that CPR is not started. However if someone is choking, and is conscious, you can provide an abdominal or chest thrust to relieve choking. You should not start CPR if the foreign body airway obstruction cannot be removed. You can read the NH Definition of DNR here . How do you know if a person has a DNR? In a medical care facility this will be in the patients chart and paperwork. The nursing and care staff should be familiar with does and does not have a DNR order. In an out-of-hospital setting check to see the patient is wearing a state-issued DNR bracelet or if the family has...

I've been following an interesting discussion on an instructors forum I am on. It is one of those conversations that started out as one thing, and is slowly morphing into several different topics. But one of the conversations that came out of it was the staff at one agency somewhat bashing the credentials of another ... and that's not cool. There are many really good CPR and First Aid programs out there. While I teach for the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American Safety and Health Institute (ASHI); there is also the American Red Cross (ARC), Emergency Care & Safety Institute (ECSI), American CPR and probably a few I'm not familiar with. There are also a lot of not so good programs out there, I'm not even going to try to look them up to list them here. How do you tell a good program from a not-so-good program? A good program has a hands-on skills component to the class. A good program can have traditional classroom courses as well as blend...