An emergency can happen at any time or at any place. Every responsible citizen should understand the basics of First Aid and Emergency Care to recognize and respond to any emergency appropriately. To make the students and its teachers well-equipped to respond to any such emergency Sri Venkateshwar International School, Sector-18, Dwarka in association with VIVO Healthcare conducted a First Aid Workshop for its teachers and students studying in Classes III to XII spanning over two weeks from May 3 to May 12, 2016. It touched upon several medical exigencies and situations that occur and very often due to ignorance as well as negligence, lead to a crisis that can be managed easily if one has the basic first aid training.
The VIVO team began the workshop by differentiating between emergency and medical emergency focusing upon the importance of the Golden hour (the first hour of emergency) and the Platinum minutes (the first ten minutes). Emergency action steps like PACT and ABC of life were emphasized. The various steps to be taken in different medical emergencies such as seizure, stroke, cardiac arrest, bone and muscle injury, dog bite, etc. were also discussed.
The participants not only got an insight into a wide range of incidents that lead to medical emergencies, the workshop also cleared a number of doubts that are associated with cases of epilepsy, heart attack, allergies and burns. It was an interesting session that saw equal participation of students as well as the faculty. The main aim of the workshop was to train young people to deal with a critical situation without losing presence of mind and ensure that the patient receives the right first aid that could be the deciding factor between life and death.
The session also highlighted the importance of Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation commonly known as CPR. It was demonstrated on a dummy doll and then students and teachers took turns to practice their newly acquired CPR skills on the dummy doll to check how well they had actually learnt the technique. It was an interactive and informative training session that gave several life saving tips to all present.
The workshop met with a colossal response from the students and the teachers. “Attending the workshop was a wonderful experience. We were taught how to act as a savior. The various assumptions we had about an emergency situation were corrected”, said Adity Kapoor of Class X. Another students of Class X Stubh Lal said, “The brilliantly organized and engaging workshop was a wonderful lesson in one of the most important life skills – how to preserve life.” Even the teachers were able to understand the difference between a seizure and epilepsy, a heart attack and a cardiac arrest, which were otherwise understood to be similar medical conditions. “The workshop was interactive and gave us hands-on experience to be ever ready to assist in case of an emergency at school”, said Ms. Monika Sharma, a Science teacher at SriVIS.
