Last night I attended a Heartstart first aid session arranged by the Mortimer Village Partnership and run by the Rural Responders in conjunction with the British Heart Foundation.
It was a very enjoyable couple of hours covering the recovery position, CPR, use of defib machines and dealing with things like severe bleeding and choking.
Key learning points for me were:
- CPR is now 30 heart compressions and 2 breaths, it was 15:2 when I last did first aid training.
- A 5cm chest compression is essential to get blood to the heart and yes it does feel like you are beating the cr*p out of someone.
- You are highly unlikely to bring someone round with CPR its function is only to keep blood to the brain until the emergency services arrive.
- A defib machine would be your new best friend in an emergency situation.
- Horsey people are more likely to have a handy dressing/bandage about their person than most people.
It was a free course (although donations welcome) and something I’d recommend to everyone. We now have three defib machines in the village which is great news and over 30 people attended the session last night.
https://www.bhf.org.uk/heart-health/how-to-save-a-life/how-to-do-cpr/heartstart
