How to Check Responsiveness for CPR

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Alv Rios and I am a Paramedic with Lansing Mercy Ambulance on behalf of Expert Village. In this clip we are going to talk about checking the responsiveness of a patient. First thing you want to do when you come across a patient that is not responsive, you want to come up and say SIR, SIR CAN YOU HEAR ME? If you get no response by verbal stimuli, you want to go to a painful stimuli. You can go ahead and use the knuckles of your hand and rub them strongly across the sternum. Feel free to put some pressure on there and it will give a nice response. If someone is unresponsive, they will have no motioness at all, otherwise seeing crouching or moving is natural. SIR, SIR CAN YOU HEAR ME? Still no response. Next step you want to do is open the airway. Since this patient is not in any traumatic situation, it is safe to do a head tilt chin lift. What that is is when you go ahead with your palm of your hand and put pressure on the forehead while using your fingertips to lift up on the chin. By doing that you are opening up the airway, preventing the tongue from putting pressure on the trachea. You next want to get down and you want to put your ear as close to your patient's mouth as you can. What you are doing is listening for any breaths. While doing this, you are also looking across the patient's chest. You are looking for any chest rise. You are going to do this for a minimum of five to ten seconds and I've now noticed that my patient is not breathing. I need to continue in giving rescue breaths now. "