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Jay's First Aid and CPR Class Preview/Review Web Page
Copyright 2001, 2002 by Jay Wiseman (safescene@aol.com) except where otherwise noted.
Note: this site is likely to be significantly revised in the future.
Who am I and why am I doing this?
My name is Jay Wiseman and I live in San Francisco, California USA. Since 1969, I
have been involved in one way or another with some aspect of emergency medical
care. Among many other activities, I worked on ambulances for about eight years,
operating in rural, suburban, and inner-city areas. During that time I responded to
thousands of calls and participated in hundreds of resuscitation attempts.
While I have been an instructor in one form or another of First Aid or CPR almost
continuously since 1971, I became seriously interested in teaching it, particularly to
citizens, in 1979 after I grew weary down to my bones of repeatedly arriving at
emergency scenes and seeing patients harmed, or even lost, because the people at
the scene had not provided even minimally adequate emergency care prior to the
arrival of somebody whose vehicle had a siren on it.
It's just awful to arrive at an emergency scene and find someone collapsed in cardiac
arrest, or some other serious but treatable medical condition, and see that there are
numerous able-bodied adults standing there doing nothing to help, yet I had this
experience time and time and time again. I'm sure that essentially everybody who has
ever worked in the emergency services has had numerous similar experiences. It is
one of the hardest aspects of doing such work. Every day in this country -- indeed,
around the world -- people die who could have lived if they had received emergency
care that a properly trained ten-year-old child could have provided. This tragedy is
made worse by the fact that there were often able-bodied adults present who could
have provided such care, but did not do so due to ignorance and/or unwarranted fear.
I had also paid a very high price to learn some important aspects of providing
emergency care, and I wanted to pass this information along to others in the
emergency services who would come after me -- thus hopefully sparing "the new
kids" (and, of course, their patients) from having to learn those same lessons in
the very grim ways that I did.
In the more than thirty years that I have been teaching, I have trained thousands of
people in various aspects of emergency care, ranging from first aid classes taught to
children to classes in Advanced Cardiac Life Support. My students have included
physicians, nurses, paramedics, emergency medical technicians, first responders,
lifeguards, police officers, fire fighters, martial artists (including the Guardian Angels),
teachers, lawyers, psychotherapists, industrial safety teams, wilderness trip leaders,
girl scouts, boy scouts, and large numbers of "plain, ordinary citizens" --
my favorite students.
Many of my former students have reported back to me that they have gone on to use
the knowledge and skills that I taught them to good effect in actual emergency
situations, and I confess that I feel tremendously proud of them. A few of my students
have even gone on to become instructors themselves, and I am tremendously proud of
them as well.
I have created this web page in order for both students and instructors of First Aid and
CPR to make better use of class time and to increase the quality of the educational
experience for all concerned. I also want it to be useful as a "preview and
review" website for those who are anticipating being in a First Aid and/or CPR
class or those who want a bit of a refresher.
Caution # 1: Please keep in mind that merely improving your knowledge has only limited value. To significantly increase your readiness to respond to an actual emergency you must also improve your skills, and accomplishing that requires actual physical practice of those skills under the guidance of a competent instructor. Furthermore, this practice must be repeated at regular intervals -- hopefully at least once a year.
Caution # 2: Please understand that the content of this website is very informal and represents only my own personal opinions. Nothing herein represents the policies or program of any official agency that teaches First Aid or CPR. Also please understand that, human beings being intrinsically infallible, there is the unavoidable risk that some of the information on this site may be inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date. It is therefore offered "as is" and "with all faults." While I consider myself a very informed and experienced person regarding the matters discussed on this site, the reader should understand that other very informed and experienced people may come to different conclusions and make different recommendations. I have provided links to other resources so that the reader may become more fully informed and thus make more informed decisions regarding what to do in a particular situation.
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Interesting Links
Wondering what equipment you'll need to perform effective First aid or CPR? Check here: Equipment Essay.
Concerned about the written tests that you have to take at the end of First Aid and/or CPR classes? Try these Written Test Warm-ups
The following is a link to an essay about the realities of controlling external bleeding. It
contains many useful tips. Controlling External Bleeding
Legal Aspects. Are you conernced about the possible legal ramifications of providing First Aid and CPR? Fortunately, the news is pretty good. Check out Medicolegal.
A severe allergic reaction, more formally known as anaphylactic shock, is a very
severe emergency that frequently requires medication if the patient is to survive. This
essay explores some under-appreciated means of giving the most common
medication used to treat the condition. Anaphylaxis and the epinephrine inhaler.
This is a link to an essay I wrote regarding what happens in actual resuscitation
attempts. Outcomes of CPR.
Students often ask questions regarding checking the victim and about breaking ribs during chest compressions. Here is an essay I wrote for the CPR-AED list regarding those matters. Success rates and breaking ribs.
Want to learn a bit about outdoor survival? Take a look at my Outdoor Survival Tips page. (I got interested in outdoor survival after seeing the movie "Blair Witch Project.")
Learning First Aid and CPR in reverse. Read my Common Errors in First Aid By Citizens essay to learn what not to do.
To learn more about CPR, please explore this site. Learn CPR.org
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