Saving lives one heartbeat at a time.
Brain death occurs in as little as six minutes. Most ambulances, even in developed nations, take ten minutes or more to arrive. Do you know what to do in an emergency to keep your loved one alive?
I live in a delightful, smaller city that I love for its gorgeous views of mountains, clean air, a stunning lake, and a slow pace of life. For all I love about the city, though, its medical infrastructure is lacking. With multiple kids at home, I concluded that I needed to know what to do in an emergency, so I sought out training for CPR and First Aid. What I learned was important enough that I asked an expat American Heart Association trainer to write a guest piece on the topic for all of you expats. I’m excited to share their article with you so that you, too, can be equipped for emergencies!
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Our first expat emergency
As foreigners in an unfamiliar land, life can become overwhelming. When we first came to our host country over 20 years ago, we didn’t even know how to ask where the bathroom was, let alone how to navigate a medical emergency. In one of our first weeks, we were eating at a restaurant and heard a loud crash outside. We ran to the window to see a car stopped and a woman lying on the ground, her bicycle on top of her, and blood gushing from her head. Lisa is a nurse and wanted to administer aid, but without language skills or understanding of the laws or culture, she had no idea what to do or even which number to call for an ambulance. Thankfully, others called the ambulance and we waited for “the professionals” to arrive.
As we waited, a ring of people surrounded this unconscious woman lying on the ground, with blood continuing to pour out of the wound on her head. No one stepped in to help. After about 15 minutes of staring and no one helping, the “ambulance” finally arrived. It was just a normal van, not a noticeable ambulance, and two men got out. One grabbing her under the arms and one grabbing her legs, they not-so-gently tossed her into the van and then left. We feared the worst.
It wasn’t easy, but we were actually able to track down the woman in the hospital later and discovered that she had indeed survived. We were overjoyed and were able to find a translator that helped us meet the woman and share her joy.
But we wondered, why did no one step in to help? Over the years, we’ve learned that one of the primary reasons is that people just don’t know what to do in an emergency situation like that. Plus, since they didn’t know how to actually administer aid, they fearing being sued for doing it wrong.
We concluded that we would become American Heart Association trainers so that we could help people know how to administer first aid while waiting for professionals to arrive.
Why expats should learn emergency First Aid
The story above isn’t just for developing countries or areas with poor medical infrastructure. Even in developed countries, it can take more than ten minutes for an ambulance to arrive at the scene, but brain death occurs in just six minutes. You do the math.
In fact, the chances of survival decrease by 10% for every minute that someone does not receive CPR. Every minute matters. If you know CPR and how to use an AED (Automated External Defibrillator), you can double or even triple a person’s chance of survival. Even for non-life-threatening injuries, quickly administering First Aid can help prevent further injury or long-term disabilities to the injured individual.
If nothing else, knowing CPR and First Aid will give you peace of mind, knowing that you can keep your loved ones alive even as you wait for help to arrive. Especially for expats in less developed areas, your skill in emergency procedures may very well be the difference of life and death for your loved ones!
Common emergency scenarios
Let’s talk about a few everyday scenarios and, as you read, consider: would you know what to do if this happened to you?
- You’re out to dinner, and a family member falls over and stops breathing. They’re unconscious and unresponsive. Brain death will occur in six minutes. Do you know what to do?
- Your baby starts choking on her food. Do you know how to help get the blockage out so she can breathe? Do you know how to perform abdominal thrusts on an infant?
- A teenager is cooking and splashes grease, which catches fire. In trying to put it out, their clothing catches fire. You get the fire out, but there are substantial burns on your teenager’s body. Now, what do you do? Do you know the signs of shock? Do you know how to treat it while you wait for the ambulance?
- A child is being careless and knocks a knife off the kitchen counter. It falls and severs his toe. Do you know how to stop the bleeding? What if it doesn’t stop? Do you know how to preserve the toe so that it can be sewn back on?
- A child’s friend is visiting and knocks out a permanent tooth. Do you know how to preserve it so that a dentist could restore it?
- You start choking and cannot breathe. No one is around to help. Do you know how to dislodge something from your own throat?
These are everyday, even common scenarios that normal people face. Without training, do you know what to do? Nothing can be more paralyzing than seeing your partner, child, or friend suffer from an injury or lie unconscious in front of you. Most people will panic because they just don’t know what to do.
If you know First Aid and CPR, though, you can prevent death or permanent injury while waiting for professionals to arrive. Knowing CPR and how to use an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) can double or even triple the chance of survival. That’s worth getting some training.
What training is available
The two best-known organizations that offer CPR and First Aid training are the American Heart Association (AHA) and the Red Cross, both of which offer training courses all over the world. If those two companies aren’t available, there are other companies that provide similar training, and sometimes local hospitals will offer training courses that you can attend. Here are some of the different kinds of training you may find offered, though actual selection will depend on the company and country offering the training:
- Heartsaver First Aid, CPR, and AED course: This is a basic First Aid & CPR course available from AHA for non-medical workers.1 You may also find a Pediatric-focused variant of this course.
- For healthcare professionals, there are additional courses offered: Basic Life Support (BLS), Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), ACLS for Experienced Providers (ACLS EP), Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS), and Pediatric Emergency Assessment, Recognition, and Stabilization (PEARS).
- Other courses, too. You can check out the full offerings and course descriptions at AHA’s website.2
Courses involve instructor training, hands-on practice, and reference guides for further review. After successful completion of the training and test, you’ll receive a 2-year AHA certificate, validating that you have successfully met AHA standards for the training.
Solutions our company provides
Our company provides a variety of courses, with AHA Heartsaver First Aid, CPR and AED training being the most popular. It includes instruction and hands-on practice for First Aid, CPR, and AED for infants, children, and adults. We provide this training for schoolteachers, childcare workers, nannies, and individuals who just want the training. We also provide training for medical professionals in Basic Life Support (BLS), including two-person-rescue bag and mask. This course is available for first-time certification or recertification of healthcare providers. Both courses come with a 2-year AHA certificate upon successful completion of the coursework and tests.
If you’re interested in the training we provide, please contact us via WeChat (ID: ChengduDoula or scan the WeChat QR code):
Conclusion
Thank you, Dr. David and Lisa, for helping us understand the value of knowing basic first aid and CPR! I’ll add two additional notes:
First, make sure to research whether your host country has “Good Samaritan” laws. If you’re unfamiliar with them, these laws provide legal protection for your attempts to administer First Aid or CPR in an emergency. Even if you did something wrong and harmed the patient, the laws protect you from being sued. In countries without these laws, though, you may not have legal protection.
Second, if your host country does not have Good Samaritan Laws, I encourage you to consider, in advance, what you would do in an emergency situation but you lack legal protection for your efforts to help. You don’t want to have to make a decision like that in a true life-or-death situation.3
Third, consider, in this context, the importance of having an active CPR/First Aid certificate. I’m not a lawyer, and I can’t guarantee that a certificate would prevent you from being found liable—but it seems reasonable that a certificate would help you if you were sued for your attempts to save someone’s life.
In the end, I encourage you to seriously consider obtaining basic CPR and First Aid training. No, I actually encourage you to get it. That’s how important the training is. You may, of course, never need these skills, but that’s the paradox of safety: by the time you know you need the skills, it’s too late to acquire them. And do not think that you know what to do because you’ve “seen it in the movies.” What you see is dramatized and rarely right.
I know that I rest easier knowing that, no matter how long an ambulance takes to reach me, I could keep my kids alive in an emergency situation. That peace of mind alone is worth the effort, cost, and time of being trained. I encourage you to make it your goal to be trained before the year is out.
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Footnotes
- My note: This is the course that I took and I was pleased with the breadth of what it covered. The only two topics that it didn’t include which I would have liked to learn: how to perform stitches and how to perform a tracheotomy. Knowing how to make stitches really isn’t necessary since there are hospitals close enough, but I’d still like to know how to do it. Tracheotomies can be life-saving procedures, though I understand why they’re not included in a basic first aid course. ↩︎
- My note: I was surprised to see that AHA now offers a 100% virtual training. It seems to require that some items be shipped to you, so it may not be a perfect option for expats, but it’s worth looking into if you can’t find training near you. ↩︎
- I live in a country without Good Samaritan Laws. What I would intend to do in a situation like this is to record a video of myself saying that I’m certified to provide CPR and asking permission to do so. That may not be enough to protect me, but I believe it mitigates the risk enough that I would perform CPR. And, in the end, I’d rather try to save someone’s life and be sued than to watch someone die, knowing that I had the skills to save them, but didn’t. ↩︎
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