Children's Safety and First Aid Open Class

The 2023 National Children's Accident Injury Surveillance Data from the China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that families who have systematically studied open courses on standardized children's safety and first aid have a 62% lower risk of accidental casualties for children under 14 than families who have not. The accuracy of pre-hospital treatment in the event of an accident can reach 72% of the standardized operations of professional medical staff - in other words, the course you spend 2-3 hours learning can really save your child's life at critical moments.

I have been teaching children's first aid for 6 years, and last week I received a good news call from a student in last month's community open class. Her 3-year-old baby's face turned purple after eating jelly stuck in it. She didn't panic and cry like before. She followed the Heimlich maneuver she learned in the class, hugged her backwards and patted her back for 30 seconds before spitting out the jelly. She was sent to the doctor to check if nothing was wrong. Before class, she would most likely have reached out to pick it, or run to the hospital with the baby in her arms. She might have suffocated on the way.

Of course, I also know that until now, many people still think that "first aid is a matter for doctors, and if ordinary people learn it, it will be easy to operate blindly and cause trouble." This statement is really not groundless. My best friend who works in the emergency department of Beijing Children’s Hospital told me that every year they encounter more than a dozen cases where parents mishandle the problem: a child gets stuck in the throat and reaches out to dig at the foreign object and pushes the foreign object deeper into the airway; the child is burned and applies toothpaste and soy sauce to the wound, which leads to infection; the suspected fracture is rubbed so hard that it shifts, and a plaster cast is enough in the end and an operation is required in the end. These are all real things that happen. But if you say that ordinary people should not learn first aid, we who do education work do not agree - 90% of those parents who make mistakes have read some fragmented knowledge on the Internet, have never taken any systematic open classes, and have never done practical exercises. Only half-understanding is the most likely to cause trouble.

In the last class, a father raised his hand and said that he had seen Heimlich's tutorial on a short video before, and thought he just held the belly and strangled hard. However, when he used the simulator to practice, he learned that babies under 1 year old cannot use the belly to impact at all. They have to be buckled upside down on the adult's lap, and the head is lowered and the feet are raised. The force cannot be too light or too heavy. It took him three practices to find the right feeling. There is also a grandma who used to say that if the child fell, it would be cured by just rubbing it. After watching the case of fracture and displacement that we showed in class, she called her family after class and told her that no one was allowed to rub her child if she fell, and that she should first use a cardboard to immobilize her and send her to the hospital. Oh, yes, there are also burns. We have to repeat the five-character principle of "rinse off the bubble cap and send it away" every time in class. First, shower with cold water for 15 to 20 minutes. Don't wipe things randomly. Many parents write these five words directly after class and stick them on the refrigerator. They are more concerned about remembering the shelf life of their children's milk powder.

Many parents ask me if I can learn from free online courses. Of course I can. If you just want to know some general knowledge, there are free short videos on the official websites of the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Red Cross Society of China. The lectures are very standardized, and they are much more reliable than blindly browsing self-media. But if you really want to be able to use it in the event of an accident, you must take offline practical classes, let’s talk about cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The video says that the compression depth for children is 1/3 of the chest, about 4 to 5 centimeters. Can you know how hard to use just by watching the video? I once had a student who watched the online tutorial 8 times. When he pressed the simulator for the first time, he felt as weak as a kitten squeezing milk. Even the simulator's reminder light couldn't light up. It took more than ten minutes of practice before his hands were sore before he found the right strength.

At the end of every class, I will make a small request to the parents that is not written in the courseware. The first thing I do when I get home after class is to move the first aid kit at home to the first floor of the shoe cabinet in the hallway and put it with the child's antipyretic medicine and antipyretic patches. Don't stuff it on the top of the closet or deep in the kitchen cabinet. When something really happens, your hands are shaking in panic. How can you have time to rummage through the cabinets to find something? Also, don’t just display pictures of your children on the lock screen of your phone. Save the phone numbers of nearby hospitals and community hospitals that can handle children’s emergencies in the speed dial. This can save you two seconds when you need to dial.

Last time a mother pulled me over after a class and said that she used to think that accidents were all in the news and they were far away from her home. It wasn’t until her child climbed out of the bay window last month and almost fell out that she realized that she didn’t learn these things to put them to use, but so that when they were actually used, she wouldn’t have to stand aside and cry. In fact, there are no accidents that are 100% preventable. We spend a few hours on this course. To put it bluntly, it is to pay more attention to the safety of our children. When an accident does happen, if you know more, your children will suffer less, and you may even save their lives.