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footflaps - that one is 3.5 cm wide
There’s a lot of bollocks spoken by some 1st aid tutors.
Tourniquets- in 12 years as a full time ambulance paramedic I never used one- the type of injury in which they are useful is vanishingly rare in civilian prehospital care, (although city centre stab injuries are a subset I wasn’t particularly exposed to) but they may be life saving if applied in the right circumstances- US soldiers in Afghanistan had them pre applied to limbs to self/buddy care in the event of IED blast injury. Almost all bleeding is controllable with sufficient direct pressure. Please don’t use a cable tie- at the tension needed it would likely be through the skin before hospital arrival and would be very hard to get a tool under to cut. If you must, a loop of fabric tightened with a stick or similar in a windlass fashion provides pressure and is releasable.
CPR- don’t worry about ratios, continuous compressions at 100/min 1/3 depth of chest and allow recoil between each compression. Get a defib, follow the instructions, you can’t harm the patient.
I think the only group I’d consider mouth to mouth would be children who tend to have hypoxia arrests, and drowning victims.
Tom (paramedic/advanced clinical practitioner in emergency medicine)
Oh, and for a MTB specific example of excellent 1st aid find Cedric Gracia’s femoral artery injury in YouTube!
Had my forestry first aid refresher recently that focuses heavily on extreme bleeds and crush injuries.
The time for applying a tourniquet has reduced since my last course and is only really for crush injuries to mitigate toxic shock. Once applied, it's for professionals to remove. Trainer also showed the importance of not buying cheap, the copies snap before they stop anything.
Big bleeds can be dealt with several ways through use of Celox type products in a few minutes. This ideally negates the need for a tourniquet and it's issues.
CPR wise, anything is better than nothing and our industry is pretty remote.
I used to volunteer for the Forestry Commission and had the chance to do their first aid course "focusing on severe bleeding and amputations" was how I think it was referred to.
Couldn't go on the course, but luckily the ranger did, as I needed stitches after an unfortunate billhook/thumb interface!
Chest compressions move a small amount of air in and out of the chest, if the heart isn't beating then oxygen requirements are actually fairly minimal. With rescue breaths some of the air will also enter the stomach, continuous rescue breaths would increase the risk of the patient vomiting (no bueno). ALS (advanced life support) involves continuous breaths however this only 'begins' once an airway has been inserted that ensures air will only enter the lungs