What is the relationship between first aid and emergency health

Judging from the practice of front-line emergency services, first aid itself is the front-end core component of the emergency health system. The two are nested from immediate risk treatment to long-term health protection and cannot be separated at all.

Last summer, a 62-year-old uncle suffered a heart attack at the square dance spot in our jurisdiction. At that time, it took 10 minutes at the fastest to call 120. Fortunately, there was an aunt nearby who had just participated in the community's free first aid training last week. She immediately performed chest compressions. The security guard of the property ran to get the AED provided at the spot. After defibrillation, the spontaneous heart rate was restored after one defibrillation. After being sent to the hospital, he recovered very well. He did not even suffer the brain damage that the doctor had worried about before. You said that if there were no front-end first aid actions, no matter how smooth the emergency green channel was, after the golden 4 minutes of cardiac arrest, the prognosis would definitely be very different. This is because emergency health has blocked the time window where problems are most likely to occur.

It’s not just sudden emergencies. When the local area suffered from heavy rains and waterlogging last year, our emergency team stationed at the resettlement site with first aid kits. During that time, the first aid work was not only dealing with fatal tasks such as cardiac arrest and electric shock, but also providing care to the transferred independent residents. Elderly residents deal with tinea pedis caused by flooding, disinfect and bandage children who accidentally fall, and keep an eye on elderly people with high blood pressure to take medicine on time. At this time, first aid has become the most effective emergency health service in disaster scenarios, and health risks of all sizes can be taken care of first.

There are actually different opinions on the relationship between the two in the industry. Many colleagues who work in communities every day to popularize first aid believe that as long as the public first aid penetration rate is increased, 80% of emergencies in emergency health can be solved. After all, the golden response time for most accidents is shorter than the 120 arrival time; but on the other hand, teachers who do research on public health systems will ask I have a different view. I feel that first aid is only the terminal means of emergency health. The real core is to prepare for risks in advance, such as installing health monitoring and one-click calling for the elderly living alone, equipping AEDs in densely populated areas, and regularly providing emergency health education to high-risk groups. Otherwise, relying on passers-by to know first aid, they will still be unable to catch up in remote areas or scenes where no one knows first aid.

After running community emergency services for almost four years, I feel that both views are correct, but the positions are different. If emergency health is compared to a safety net that covers all residents' health risks, first aid is the frontmost contact point of the network. If there is a real risk, it will be the first to catch it. But if the rest of the entire network is loosely woven, these few contacts alone cannot cover all risks. Not long ago, a high school student came to our school to learn first aid. He said that the last time his deskmate was allergic to mangoes, he couldn't breathe. He didn't know how to deal with it and could only wait. Now that he has learned Heimlich and basic allergy treatment, he won't panic next time he encounters it. You see, if ordinary people have more first aid skills, they actually move the emergency health defense line a few hundred meters away from the hospital and towards themselves. When something goes wrong, the people around you will always be the first to help.