Breaking Down CPR: Steps and Considerations
1. Ensuring Safety First
Prioritizing Safety in CPR
- Assess for Dangers: Always begin by checking for potential hazards in the environment.
- Importance of Safety: Emphasize the critical role of your safety in ensuring the patient's chance of survival.
2. Seeking a Response
Efforts to Rouse the Patient
- Talk and Tap: Attempt to elicit a response from the patient through verbal communication and gentle physical stimuli.
3. Assessing the Airway
Evaluating and Clearing the Airway
- Airway Examination: Inspect the patient's airway for potential obstructions such as foreign objects, liquid, vomit, or blood.
- Utilizing Head Tilt, Chin Lift: Deploy the head tilt and chin lift technique after positioning the patient's stretcher flat.
- 10-Second Airway Check: Observe, listen, and feel for any signs of breathing or airway blockage for no more than 10 seconds.
- Beware of Agonal Gasping: Recognize and distinguish agonal gasping (last breaths) from normal breathing.
- Muscle Movements: Acknowledge that some patients may exhibit limb movements, often mistaken for seizures, due to lack of oxygen stimulation.
4. Initiating CPR
Commencing Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
- Immediate CPR: Initiate CPR promptly for the best possible outcome.
- Proper Hand Placement: Position your hands over the chest, approximately at the nipple line.
- Compression Technique: Maintain consistent hand and finger placement, utilizing body weight for compressions.
- Compression Depth: Compress the chest to a depth of 5 to 6 cm, ensuring full recoil for blood refill.
- Compression Rate: Maintain a rate of 120 compressions per minute for optimal blood flow to the brain.