Aibu to be a bit shocked at St Johns Ambulance teaching of CPR?

[Hairyfairy01]

Dd recently attended at group where St Johns Ambulance very kindly agreed to teach the kids first aid and CPR. However I was a bit shocked that they were still teaching the 2 puffs and 30 pumps on the chest technique.

I thought this method stopped being taught years ago thanks to Vinnie .Jones and his 'staying alive' campaign with the British Heart Foundation? It certainly isn't how you are taught it in the NHS.

AIBU to think that such organisations should be teaching people, especially very young children, the correct, most up to date techniques or am I just being ungrateful?

@Pengggwn

You wouldn't always do rescue breaths if there was a severe facial injury, especially one that is bleeding due to risk of infection (unless you have a pocket mask).

If some's face was covered in vomit etc. I would be very hesitant to do rescue breaths without a mask unless they were a friend or relative. There's more risk of me doing a sympathetic vomit into their mouth/airwaves and making things even worse!

Rescue breaths make it more effective. It's not taught with the rescue breaths, however, because it makes people less likely to do CPR because they are apprehensive of doing the breaths.

It's also priorities, isn't it? No circulation means that no matter how many beautiful breaths you give, the brain is going to be starved of oxygen. We know that at the point of collapse, the blood is likely to be 94-100% oxygen saturated in a healthy person, and perhaps 88%-92% oxygen saturated in a person with a condition such as COPD.

Our rescue breaths will have 13-16% oxygen in them, so vastly inferior to even room air. So in the first few minutes, the circulating blood actually has a superior oxygen yield than we can supply with rescue breaths.

The trouble is, it will get used up, and it will need to be replaced. That's why in- hospital arrests are much more successful than OOH arrests - access to timely defibrillation, bag-valve-masks with oxygen supplies, expert CPR, etc.

Somewhereovertherain- what a ridiculous thing to say!
There are situations where St. John are the first response as they are stationed at big events, concerts and in arenas. They are trained from a basis first aider, enhanced up to emergency response.
These are people that are giving their spare time and volunteering to help people.
They may just be putting a plaster on your child, giving you some water or saving your life.
How ungrateful can you be.
If you have had a bad experience then that is unfortunate but don't assumed all are untrained and not able to perform their duties

Our fostering agency are in the process of buying keyrings for all carers that contain gloves and a mask. Dont know where you get them from but they sound like a good idea. Not seen it yet though !

Just seen someone has done a link to them further up thread !

We have a mask for work for breaths but in my last course it was still 2 breaths but you were taught if there was obstruction vomit/blood to do compresions only

@Pengggwn

I was responding to your comment "Why wouldn't you do rescue breaths if the airway was open?"

I didn't realise it was a rhetorical question

Just to add that St John do have youth organisations similar ages to Brownies /cubs and the kids are taught CPR.

I did a course last year, we were taught 30:2 (as an aside, when I started out doing first aid in 1999 it was 15:2) and ALSO shown the Vinnie Jones video. The protocols change all the time as research shows that different approaches are better.

As for military first aid being better, I've been taught by specialist first aid tutors, paramedics, and ex-military on the various courses I've done.

There is increasing evidence that rescue breaths (30:2) is less beneficial than uninterrupted chest compressions.
When you are pumping up & down on the chest you are actually building up pressure in the blood vessels with the blood you are pumping out of the heart (blood pressure), it is this pressure that allows the oxygen to be moved to the vital organs - the brain is the one we worry about most during a cardiac arrest.
Every time the compressions are interrupted eg for a bit of mouth to mouth, this pressure drops right off & has to be built up again. The higher the pressure, the better the chance of getting oxygen to the brain.
Compressing the chest may pull some air in & out of the lungs which will allow for some fresh oxygen in. But the most important thing is to get a defibrillator there asap. CPR buys time, defibs may restart the heart.

I do wish 16 year olds were made to do a decent and robust first aid course along with GCSEs

I kind of agree, but if you don't use it you forget. That's why for work purposes you have to redo the course every 3 years.

I did do a course when I was 16 as it happens, but I'd totally forgotten it all by the time I did my first "first aid at work" course when I was 27.

TBH if you're prepared to do chest compressions and use a defib you're doing better than a vast amount of people. Anything is better than nothing

And I think St John's Ambulance are the best! I was spiked a few years ago and they came to my rescued and they were ACE

Taught 30:2 and I always carry a pocket mask with me.

Many people are willing to use a defibrillator because they believe they need to have been trained to operate one. Introducing defib training was quite possibly one of the stupidest ideas that we've had in modern day first aid training as many members of the general public now believe that because a training course exists, to operate a defib you need to have undergone training.

I have this conversation regularly with people you do not need to undergo defib training to operate most defibrillator in the public domain; the instructions and guidance is clear and 999 will talk you through it too.

A few months ago now I came across a scene where there was people and a defib however no one was using it because they believed it required training; 999 were doing a great job trying to assure them and walk them through the steps but they were terrified as they hadn't been "trained". They had gone to all the effort of finding one and unlocking it, but didn't realise how simple it was to use it.

The reason compressions work without breaths is because you don't fully deplete all of the oxygen during circulation; likewise with breathing, we only "use" around 5% of our oxygen from the 20% that's in the air, we exhale the remaining 15%.

We have to do Medical Emergency training as part of our job, and CPR is part of that. We have to do refresher training every year and so far it's always been 2 breaths to 30 compressions.

They teach it but with a caveat that you don't have to use the breaths.

The Staying Alive advert is so old, they went down in speed for a bit (Nelly the Elephant) and now we seem to be back at Staying Alive.

YABU to be shocked. What harm can it do knowing how to administer rescue breaths?

I'm a midwife and did my basic life support with the resuscitation officer at the hospital in May and was taught 30:2, she said the advice now is to go back to this. We have ambubags in all our delivery rooms for this.

Having said that, resuscitation on a pregnant woman is a bit different. You have to push the uterus to the left and deliver the baby ASAP to be able to do effective resuscitation. I've seen a peri mortem CS done due to cardiac arrest and that was bloody scary - fortunately both the mum and baby survived.

Continuous chest compressions are a lot easier for a (probably panicking) member of the public to do. No having to count compressions, just basically keep going.

I think part of the rescue breath part is that you also have an opportunity to check if the patient is now breathing again (though I could be mistaken there). It's something you might miss if you are purely focused on cc's as most people are looking down at their hands.

I find it very unlikely a 7 old year would need to perform CPR on a random. How often are they going to be the only other person in a public place.

The scenario they are being taught for is mum or dad or sibling needing CPR. Bodily fluids not such a big deal then. Given their chest compressions are likely to be pretty ineffective on an adult, the rescue breaths might help. Maybe. In reality the only thing that would probably help is knowing how to call 999.

I'm a first aid trainer. 30:2 is current guidance, where possible.

DD is a Brownie, and has just finished her first aid badge with her pack. She's 7. I'd already taught her CPR, and the recovery position about a year ago.

With CPR, both I and the Brownies taught her that it's not like the telly. Her CPR wasn't ever going to 'bring someone back', because that's not what it's for. We taught her that its there only to give the person a chance while an ambulance comes. We were also clear that it might not be enough, that not everyone can be saved, even in hospital but that she could help the give them their best chance and, in the end, that's all she was being asked to do.

We both also made it clear that the only thing she ever had to do was make sure an ambulance was called, whether by her or by someone else. And that her own safety always came first.

She was fine with all of it, and understood. She wasn't upset my any of it.

I, too, think it should be mandatory teaching in schools. Even if it's taught at 15 and never again, it still means it's not unfamiliar thing if, God forbid, it's ever needed.

I'm passionate about this, not because of the difference it makes - though it does - but because of a conversation I had with a former student once. His wife had a sudden cardiac issue at home one evening. He called for help and started CPR, but she sadly died. When he spoke to me, he thanked me for teaching him - not because it had worked, but because he felt he'd been able to do everything he could to help her, and that was worth a lot to him afterwards

I'm also a cub leader. I teach my Cubs first aid but haven't taught them CPR. Mainly because they just don't listen or pay attention so we felt it was more important to drip feed and concentrate on GETTING HELP.
And who knew that if you "dab" it's part of the recovery position? Haha

Interesting just how much force is needed to do chest compression's properly. I presume from the Mumsnet emergency services posse that too much is less harmful than too little?.

Also whats to stop another person doing rescue breaths whist the other is pumping away

As to the olde St John two of my DD's are St John trained, one of them went to see a Uni re a medical course and had to do demonstrate CPR Doc there said she had a perfect technique:)