First aid skill should be taken as a basic skill to possess for the benefit of ourselves and our loved ones. Imagine your skill in bringing a panicky situation under control or saving someone's life. It's self-fulfilling, and it makes you an invaluable asset to humanity.
Unfortunately, I didn't possess this skill while growing up. There was a first aid kit in school that the physical education teacher made use of to attend to emergency cases before moving to the hospital. Back home, we had a family nurse that was at my parents's beck and call whenever there was an emergency. I didn't have experience in this regard throughout my school days.
Fortunately for me, I started a teaching job a few years ago. I was teaching chemistry. Chemistry involves the handling of chemicals, and injuries can happen while working with the chemicals. Though the secondary school curriculum that I delivered does as much as possible to prevent the students from coming into contact with concentrated chemicals, there are still possibilities of encountering injuries in the laboratory. To prepare me for a situation like that, the school authority sponsored me to attend a basic course in laboratory management.
The course included laboratory injuries and ways to handle each case. It was in this course that I learned how to manage acid and fire burns, poisoning, and bleeding injuries.
A few months after the course, I was in the laboratory on a fateful evening, having a practical class with the final-year students preparing for their senior secondary school examination, when a student ran upstairs to the laboratory, calling for help for his mate.
The school was a boarding school. In the evening, the boarders have about an hour of sports where they play football, volleyball, tennis, and the like.
When I heard the screaming, I rushed down to the field where the boy was sitting. He had a cut on his leg while playing ball. I later discovered that a broken bottle cut him on his leg when he fell down and slipped on the field.
Blood was gushing out of the cut. I nearly panicked, but I remembered that that should be the last thing to be done in managing such a situation. I immediately sent a student to go and bring my laboratory first aid kit. Before her arrival, I continuously applied pressure to the wound to stop the blood from coming out.
When the skit arrived, I made use of a bandage to maintain the required pressure to stop the bleeding. I raised the leg above the level of the heart so that the coming blood from the heart wouldn't descend freely to the wounded part of the leg. The bleeding stopped, and I held the leg up for a few minutes further before calling the school driver who stays on the school premises to help transport him to the hospital.
It was that day that I appreciated the course that gave me the confidence to confront such a situation. The injury was stitched in the hospital, and comprehensive care was given to the boy by the medical experts.
The situation made me an advocate for first aid skills. I imagined what would have happened if I lacked what to do, like the students that stood and watched my intervention. I also learned not to panic in emergency situations.
My thoughts should be about the solutions.
Can I handle it? Or do I need to call for help?
Making the best decision requires one to be calm in the face of an emergency situation.