Interesting, just did my CPR course today as well. The gentleman teaching the class is an EMS Paramedic.... people were a bit surprised, he pulled no punches and gave us a fair bit of information that isn't standardly included in the Red Cross syllabus. Some of it a bit disturbing, but his tack on it was "better you know NOW, then for me to feed you the 'standard line', and have you freak out later that maybe you did something wrong"
About broken ribs.... in all his years as a paramedic, he's only personally know of 3 cases where CPR did not break ribs, one was a baby (more flexible bones), and 2 were great big football player types.
The other thing, was to tell us that less than 1% of all CPR recipients ever survive.. but "remember, you're doing this BECAUSE the person is DEAD. You can't make it any worse, you can only make it better, and less than 1% chance is better than NO chance which is what they have if you do nothing." Of course one also has to figure in the circumstances, in terms of the actually likelihood it'll help.
They used to have a TV ad on here in Canada encouraging people to take First Aid and CPR courses, that was a dramatization of a 12 yr old girl saving her grandpa with CPR, they were forced to pull the ad as false advertising. And a good thing too imo, (and his). He's seen people get entirely hysterical and freaked out when it hasn't helped, presuming they've done something wrong and killed the person, because they were taught to believe that 'CPR will save their lives'.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-04-17 06:00 pm (UTC)About broken ribs.... in all his years as a paramedic, he's only personally know of 3 cases where CPR did not break ribs, one was a baby (more flexible bones), and 2 were great big football player types.
The other thing, was to tell us that less than 1% of all CPR recipients ever survive.. but "remember, you're doing this BECAUSE the person is DEAD. You can't make it any worse, you can only make it better, and less than 1% chance is better than NO chance which is what they have if you do nothing." Of course one also has to figure in the circumstances, in terms of the actually likelihood it'll help.
They used to have a TV ad on here in Canada encouraging people to take First Aid and CPR courses, that was a dramatization of a 12 yr old girl saving her grandpa with CPR, they were forced to pull the ad as false advertising. And a good thing too imo, (and his). He's seen people get entirely hysterical and freaked out when it hasn't helped, presuming they've done something wrong and killed the person, because they were taught to believe that 'CPR will save their lives'.