Medical Skills

Not everyone is equipped to handle a proper emergency, but there are some basic skills that everyone should be taught in schools and occasionally reviewed in the workplace that could save a whole lot of lives around this country and the entire world.

I am speaking of the basic medical life saving techniques that are taught in specialized first aid training courses. This knowledge does not give you any kind of qualification to practice medicine or anything, but what is does provide are the skills to be able to keep a victim healthy long enough to make it to a hospital.

In the wilds, or in a situation that would prevent you from finding a hospital, you are going to have to know a lot more than the average person if you are planning on staying alive, or keeping others alive.

The first skill that you need to know is bandaging. It seems like a simple thing to do, but if the bandage is too tight or too dirty it could lead to worse problems that just a wound. Also there are different areas and types of wounds that require different bandages. For example, a chest wound that has punctured a lung requires a bandage that the victim is going to be able to breath out of and not in, kind of like a one way valve. Some thing piercing the body requires a doughnut bandage and normally the object would be left in place until you get to a hospital, but what if no hospital was available?

You also need some basic knowledge of CPR. The standards and practices for this essential life saving technique change more often that it should. The easiest way to remember and the method that I have been recently taught is to keep your chest compressions in beat to the song, Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.

Is is a vast array of medical knowledge for you to learn and if you keep reading this site you are going to eventually be prepared for absolutely any medical emergency that might present itself.