First Aid

My fiancée had a first aid training yesterday at the elderly home. All of the staff had to be there.

The trainer was a nice guy, but the training itself was not that great.

She came home yesterday and began to complain about the whole training. As she studied to be a general nurse in the secondary school, and she has a degree as a physiotherapist, I can say, she has quite good skills and experience in First Aid.

Training material:

Question: - What do

you do, and how do you recognize a hip bone fracture?

Fiancée answer (who is a physiotherapist): - You can recognize the fracture the easiest way by inspecting how the patient hold his/her leg. If it turned/rotated to any directions which are not normal (typical sign), you can be sure about the fracture

Trainer's answer: - You have to grab the leg and move around, and you will hear a disturbing "CRACKING" noise which will be so disturbing, that you will know, this is a fracture. (Of course and in order to get this conclusion, torture the patient)

Then later on they "learned" how to do CPR. Of course, the trainer did not explain, only showed, and the only "feedback" if you did it correctly was the clicking noise coming from the CPR Doll. Which noise obviously will not be present when they have to do real CPR, but who cares? They all signed the paper, they had been trained about it. Everything was showed, but not explained. And without explanation, the whole thing does not worth anything.

When you do a CPR, you HAVE to use proper pose of your hands (straight hands, not bended elbows in order to give the best pressure, etc), and you have to measure on the chest of the body quickly where you have to push. (This is being taught to anyone who wants to get a driving license in Hungary)

Without telling these information to your trainees, the whole training will be useless. My fiancée saw lots of person from the training, when they did the exercise they almost pushed the poor CPR Doll's belly, or shoulder, etc. :)

Also her colleagues did not understand, why they can not do CPR on a person laying on a bed. (Obviously Dr. Conrad Murrey did not understand it either, as he performed CPR incorrectly on Michael Jackson.)

The trainer did not know, that having a stroke can be caused by lots of things, not only by having the arteries clogged. (Example, an arterial bleeding in the brain can cause stroke too) - and I am not a doctor, and still know it.

Also he mentioned, that stroke can cause several behavior and lifestyle changes at the patients. (This is not a fiction, this is a medical fact)

He told a story, when a patient who suffered of stroke started to speak a foreign language he did not know before to his roommate in an elderly home. (This is bullsh*t, as having a stroke will not cause you miraculously learn a foreign language out of the sudden. It can cause, that you will suddenly remember all the french words you learnt at school, but you WILL NOT SPEAK FOREIGN WORDS YOU DID NOT KNOW BEFORE THAT IS FOR SURE)

Of course the staff believed him, and found the whole story marvelous.

So at the end, training had been given, all people signed it, and now officially they are ready to provide proper first aid, and proper CPR to anyone in need. The big question, what happens if these people make mistakes? Other people might die. Simple as that.

Shouldn't we give a more specific and more detailed training to people who are working with the elderlies?