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Your best safety tools reside in your own head. I'm a big fan of taking training on anything that interests me, but especially anything that might affect keeping breath in my body.
One thing I noted from my last multi-day rafting trip was how few of us had current CPR certification. Only two of us out of almost 20 people, although over half had done some sort of CPR training in the past.
Standards have recently changed a bit, they get reviewed by ILCOR about every 5 years. Some people may be confused about rumours they've heard about "eliminating" rescue breaths.
( <broken link removed> )
(http://www.ilcor.org/home/)
Current guidance is that rescue breaths are important, but not essential. If you are uncomfortable with giving rescue breaths for any reason including cultural or personal reluctance, fear of infection (going in either direction, from rescuer to victim or victim to rescuer) then just give the chest compressions.
Chest compressions will move SOME air in and out of the lungs. The blood is pumping slowly enough that it probably would not effectively exchange all of the oxygen available in a rescue breath (which is only about 40% of the oxygen available in an unassisted breath) anyway.
So chest compression are the most important, rescue breaths are good to have. Get the blood flowing, you can make the difference.
It's important to know that the absolutely most effective use of CPR is on drowning victims, and it has a VERY high rate of resuscitation, especially for children.
Grown adults experiencing cardiac arrest without external factors causing it tend to only benefit from CPR when professional medical care is applied immediately after CPR. They generally have some kind of 'heart condition' of a degenerative nature and will need aggressive medical intervention to fully recover.
Drowning victims, and child victims especially, usually just need to get their throat/lungs cleared and a little jump start to get them back to function. The time the heart can be stopped before permanent damage occurs does vary widely, but is a considerable time in cold water.
I just thought I would share this info as I finally took the plunge from regularly-re-certifying as a CPR provider to CPR Instructor last weekend, along with some other employees in my shop. We're now certified under the Emergency First Response program ( <broken link removed> ) which is associated with PADI, the professional association of dive instructors. This program has quite a bit more than the basics you'll get from infrequently-scheduled Fire Department CPR classes or the Red Cross, specifically in respect to water sports injuries.
One thing I noted from my last multi-day rafting trip was how few of us had current CPR certification. Only two of us out of almost 20 people, although over half had done some sort of CPR training in the past.
Standards have recently changed a bit, they get reviewed by ILCOR about every 5 years. Some people may be confused about rumours they've heard about "eliminating" rescue breaths.
( <broken link removed> )
(http://www.ilcor.org/home/)
Current guidance is that rescue breaths are important, but not essential. If you are uncomfortable with giving rescue breaths for any reason including cultural or personal reluctance, fear of infection (going in either direction, from rescuer to victim or victim to rescuer) then just give the chest compressions.
Chest compressions will move SOME air in and out of the lungs. The blood is pumping slowly enough that it probably would not effectively exchange all of the oxygen available in a rescue breath (which is only about 40% of the oxygen available in an unassisted breath) anyway.
So chest compression are the most important, rescue breaths are good to have. Get the blood flowing, you can make the difference.
It's important to know that the absolutely most effective use of CPR is on drowning victims, and it has a VERY high rate of resuscitation, especially for children.
Grown adults experiencing cardiac arrest without external factors causing it tend to only benefit from CPR when professional medical care is applied immediately after CPR. They generally have some kind of 'heart condition' of a degenerative nature and will need aggressive medical intervention to fully recover.
Drowning victims, and child victims especially, usually just need to get their throat/lungs cleared and a little jump start to get them back to function. The time the heart can be stopped before permanent damage occurs does vary widely, but is a considerable time in cold water.
I just thought I would share this info as I finally took the plunge from regularly-re-certifying as a CPR provider to CPR Instructor last weekend, along with some other employees in my shop. We're now certified under the Emergency First Response program ( <broken link removed> ) which is associated with PADI, the professional association of dive instructors. This program has quite a bit more than the basics you'll get from infrequently-scheduled Fire Department CPR classes or the Red Cross, specifically in respect to water sports injuries.
