Transcript of
First aid for children
Being able to perform first aid can be a life saver
and is a great skill to learn.
The key to being a confident and competent first aider
is to attend a recognised first-aid course
where you will be given plenty of opportunity
to practise the skills you're taught.
At 13 months he was sitting at this kitchen table
and having his dinner,
and he put a grape in his mouth,
and just as he was eating the grape,
he saw something our cat did, laughed, and sucked the grape back.
And he couldn't get it out himself.
I wasn't here. A very dear friend was.
And she knew about life saving.
He turned blue pretty much immediately
and became unconscious very, very quickly.
Luckily, her brother was here as well
and he called the ambulance.
And then she and he took turns breathing for Luke
for the whole time until the ambulance arrived.
The only hope was to get him to Great Ormond Street
where he was on a life-support machine, which bypassed his lungs,
which had stopped working,
and oxygenated his blood outside his body.
I remember just walking around and talking to myself,
"A grape? This is ridiculous. How can this happen?"
Subsequently, Great Ormond Street told us about a lot of incidents like this.
In three other cases none of the children survived.
First aid is really important because what it does is it saves lives.
Most first-aid procedures are very simple.
If you look at them in a mechanical way, for example, if someone isn't breathing,
in terms of restoring their life or maintaining their life
you have to breathe for them.
If their heart is not working,
you have to simulate the working of the heart by compressing their chest.
First aid just calms you down because it prepares you for what could happen.
It doesn't prepare you for everything but if something did happen,
it's taught you what to do, how to react calmly, about the recovery position,
so you can get them breathing before the ambulance comes,
because it's a matter of life and death in some situations.
I think it gives you more confidence in the workplace and in the home
to be able to look out for the dangers and to be able to respond
in a confident and sure manner, really.
I think it's a responsibility of every person, parents especially,
but really everyone, to know first aid,
to be able to help somebody if you see them in the street.
But as a parent or a carer, if you knew what to do in that situation,
and you don't have long, you have a couple of minutes, to deal with this,
you've got to know what to do.
Before I came today I thought, "I'll never be able to do that."
I watch Casualty and I think, "How did they do that?"
And coming here today I've learnt a lot. It's actually quite simple.
You just need to do it nice and slowly and calmly and remember the steps.
If a child is breathing and unconscious,
the safest position is the recovery position.
To put someone in the recovery position, roll them on their side
but always ensure that their airway is open and they continue to breathe.
So check their breathing regularly.
You don't realise at the time that you're retaining the information
but it's amazing when a situation arises and an emergency comes around
that you actually can pull out that information when it's needed.
First aid is common sense at the end of the day.
Most first-aid procedures are very simple.
They're easy to learn, they're easy to understand,
and we know they can make the fundamental difference
between life and death.
I'm certain if it had been me there that Luke wouldn't be here now
because I just wouldn't have known what to do.
