Quote:
Originally Posted by 4thIDvet
Everyone thinks 911 emergency is only a phone call away.
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Some of them just can't seem to imagine that it's not. Over half of Americans are city dwellers now, where there's cellular service everywhere and the Magic Helicopter to whisk you to an emergency room. That's just TV stuff in the rural Ozarks.
After being first on the scene (after those involved) to a wreck that involved body parts laying in the street, I realized that dimly-remembered 45-year-old Cub Scout snakebite procedures and the CPR course I took weren't all that useful. I called the police, fire department, and three local hospitals trying to find out if there was a first aid course around. Nope, they've all gone away. Nobody could tell me what happened, but I'm guessing liability issues. People kept directing me to the Red Cross. The Red Cross only teaches CPR and their new electroshock machine, not much use for major trauma.
I finally found an old military battlefield medicine booklet that told me what I wanted to know. Basically, all you *can* do is make sure the airway is clear, cover any sucking chest wounds, where to put pressure to stop arterial bleeding on the limbs. Then you go off for help if you need to.
Sorry, with the high rate of hepatitis and HIV, if it's a stranger they better hope someone else will do CPR if they need it.
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