Current CPR Guidelines

Series Summary

The term “first aid” refers to the immediate care that is provided to an injured or sick person. It is used to stabilize a patient until further medical treatment and assessment can be provided at a hospital or care facility. In 1877, St. John Ambulance (an international charity based in England) was founded and taught first aid in mining districts and railway centers. First aid is helpful in treating broken bones, heart attack, stroke, and childbirth. Ambulances are usually the first to administer aid to the sick or injured, but often times there are civilians who are trained in first aid whom aid the patient.

In this series of videos, learn the basics of first aid from a registered respiratory therapist. Watch as our expert demonstrates how to properly assess an injured person’s condition. Learn how to help someone who is choking and maneuver them in order to clear their air passage. Watch an introduction to CPR and see how to properly apply compressions and breaths in order to save a person’s life. Learn the difference in procedures of adult and infant CPR. The compressions and breaths that you apply will be different for infants and adults. Watch this series of videos and be better prepared in the case of an emergency.

Video Transcript

"Hello, I’m Michelle Boyer of the AD HOC Group of North Colorado. I’m going to be demonstrating the steps of CPR for adults, children and infants. We’re going to be using the most current guidelines. Before I begin, and to help keep this simple, think of these steps as part of three basic groups of things to do. The first is to assess for a response and call for help, the second is to assess for breathing and give rescue breaths if they’re needed, and the third is to start CPR, the compressions and continue until help arrives. The first step is to check for a response, if there’s no response and the victim is an adult, go call for help before continuing. If the victim is a child or an infant, you’ll do two minutes of CPR and then you’ll go call for help. If someone else is around, have them go call for help right away, whether it’s an adult, infant or a child. Be sure to tell them to come back, you’ll want to know whether or not they reached someone, how long its going to be before help arrives, and you may need their help later on. Stay with the victim so that you can do CPR if it’s needed, when checking for a response, be sure to speak loudly, people can often hear long after they’ve seen to have lost consciousness, your voice may be the one thing that keeps them connected to you. Also, don’t tell the victim that you’re trying to help them, tell them that you are helping them. If there’s no response, but the person is breathing adequately, that would be a breath every five to six seconds, then the person is going to have a heart beat. If you get no breathing response, the heart will stop if it hasn’t already, so begin breathing and compressions. Watch while I demonstrate how to check for a response and how to get help. “Are you okay?” “Are you okay?” “Go call for help please and come right back.” Okay now if you want to practice along, go get a teddy bear or a pillow and you can practice along using that while we do the next clips. "