Video: First Aid Equipment for Anaphylaxis

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Paramedics use first aid equipment for treating allergic reactions. Find out what this equipment is and how it works in this free video.

Video Transcript

So if we were called to a scene for someone who is having difficulty breathing with a possibility of it being from an allergic reaction I am going to show you some of the things that would help us determine how bad this patient is and then later we will go on how to treat it. So initially we are going to show up and its very helpful to us if they have a list of their allergies, if they have a list of their medications that they take and if they have a list of any type of health history; any type of health problems they might have had in the past. That's very important information for us and that is something we are going to try and determine immediately. What I have here is this is Life Pack 12 and it's the version that we use. It's a heart monitor but it also does a lot of other great things for us. So first we are going to come up and start talking with the patient. We are going to be looking for the signs and symptoms that we had discussed earlier. We would be looking for any type of rash, anything obvious such as a bee sting or exposure to any type of substance that's maybe somewhat out of the ordinary for this person. Then we are going to have one person that's going to use this. Now what this does, this will take blood pressures for us. If we don't have this we can take blood pressures the old way. We are also going to use a stethoscope. We want to determine their breathing and see how well they're moving air. If they have, as I mentioned earlier, if they have any wheezing, coughing that is going to be something that is going to alert us that this could be a big problem. We are also going to look at their skin color and appearance. This will also take a look at their heart. We always want to take a look at their heart just to make sure that their heart beat is going normally. You can also look at we have oxygen saturation. I'll turn this on and you can see all the categories. We can also read how much oxygen this person is getting. This device here just goes on their finger and it will determine the amount of oxygen that's in the blood that's getting circulated. And so that will be helpful also because if they are not getting enough oxygen one of our primary things that we are going to do is give them oxygen to try to make sure that they are moving enough oxygen. So again you check their blood pressure, you will be listening to the lung sounds. You will determine how much oxygen that they are getting and then we would put them on the cardiac monitor and see if their heart's in regular rhythm. If it's too fast, if it's too slow we will see what is going on there. Another thing this can do is that it can also determine the carbon dioxide that this patient is getting. And that's another tool that we have that we can connect to this and determine that. So along with getting a first impression of this person along with their history, their allergies and their medications will give us a good generalized picture of what exactly is going on with this person and how serious their condition may be.

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First Aid Equipment for Anaphylaxis

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