Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to your first lesson in the First Aid unit, Assessing a Casualty.

I'm Mr. Clarke and I'm going to be your teacher for today's lesson and I'm really excited to be here with you.

And that's because first aid is an extremely important topic because knowing what to do in an emergency situation may lead to you one day, saving someone's life.

So come on, let's get started.

To be able to participate fully in today's lesson, you're going to need just two things, and that's an exercise book or a piece of paper, and also a pen.

So if you haven't got those in front of you now and you need to go and get them, just pause this video, and then press play when you're ready to start.

By now you've already started your learning journey for today by taking part in the intro quiz and I look forward to seeing how you did.

During the rest of today's lesson, we'll cover the following areas, checking for danger, airways, breathing, and circulation before you'll then be ready to take the exit quiz and I already know that you're going to do great in it.

Before we get into the lesson though, there are a few key words that you'll need to know.

So let's have a look at them.

First of all, we have first aid.

Now that means to refer to help given to sick or injured people, until medical treatment is available for that person.

The next word is assessing, which means the act of making a judgement or a decision.

So when we're assessing a casualty, as this unit is called that means looking at somebody who is injured, our casualty and making a judgement or decision about what first aid that person might need.

And finally, we have the word unconscious, and this is when someone is not awake or responding to their environment.

Right now, I am conscious and I hope you are too, because we are awake and we are responding to what's happening around us.

Whereas if someone is unconscious, that might not be the case.

Now we understand what is meant by first aid, I've got your first task of today's lesson.

And that is that I would like you to think of any examples of when someone might require first aid and write them down for me.

That might, for example, be something like, if they've hurt themselves and they've got a burn or a scald, but I'm not giving you any more clues.

I'm sure you've got loads of ideas yourself.

So pause this video now, while you complete the task, and press play again, when you're ready to resume.

Let's see how many you managed to find, because during that break, I also had a thought too.

So let's see if any of our examples match up.

Some of the ones that I came up with and you could have had included things such as cuts and grazes, nosebleeds, head injury, sickness, choking and as I mentioned, for my example, burns and scalds.

What other ones did you come up with? Before we undergo any actual practical first aid, we must make sure that the environment the person injured is in, our casualty is safe for us to enter.

We call this part, checking for danger.

On your screen now, there are two locations, a building site and a park.

Your task now will be to look at the locations of a building site and a park, and write down what dangers we might need to check for before we go and assist someone with first aid.

To give you a clue, I'm going to work with you on an example.

Here's a street location, and here are some possible dangers we might need to be aware of and watch out for.

For example, if someone was injured and required first aid, I would need to be aware that there isn't any broken glass around, before I walk towards them on knelt beside them.

I might also need to make sure that there are no vehicles or cyclists around that might bump into us because then suddenly, we've got two casualties.

So pause this video now, and do the same task for the building site and park location.

What dangers can you spot or think about that you might need to be aware of? Let's have a look now at the first example of a building site.

Some examples for possible dangers might've included live wires, which means potentially you need to make sure that the power is off so you don't get electrocuted.

There might be tools or equipment lying around on the floor and depending on the building site, there might also be chemicals that are on the floor which have spilled.

In a park, just like the street, we might have broken class which we need to avoid, other people who are around us and might not see us and therefore collide with us, and also any other sharp objects that might be on the floor near where our casualty is lying or sitting.

We've checked for danger and we now know it's safe.

Whew! So we can approach the person who is injured, and we can administer first aid.

You're going to see now a video of me doing the next stage, of assessing a casualty, which is the airway stage.

I'm going to give you a little bit of a clue though.

You might want to take some notes of the steps I take in the video, because you may or may not need them for a task afterwards.

Before checking the airways for my patient I need to check firstly if they're conscious or unconscious.

Remember we looked at unconscious as our key word at the start of the lesson.

It refers to whether the person or the patient here can respond or react to what's happening around them.

We can check this by simply going up to them and asking, hello, can you hear me? It's Mr. Clarke, can you hear me? Another way in which we can check to see if the person's conscious or unconscious unresponsive is by tapping a very gently on the shoulder like this.

Hello, can you hear me? At this point, I can see that my patient is unconscious 'cause they're not responsive to either me speaking to them or me tapping on the shoulder.

Which is now where we're going to move on to the next point, which is opening up the airway.

To the open up the airway, you're going to get one of your hands I'm going to use my left hand, and place it on the forehead of your patient.

You're then going to get two fingers from your other hand, and placed them underneath the chin like so.

You're going to slowly push your hand backwards on the forehead and the two fingers upwards, and this will move the head up as well.

This then opens up the airway and stops the tongue from falling to the back of the throat, potentially causing choking.

Now, if we suspect that our patient has incurred a spinal injury, we need to take extra precautions.

So we're going to take both of our hands, and we're going to place them either side of the head but whatever you do, do not move their head.

You're just going to place them like so.

You're then going to use your fingertips, and very gently push the jaw upwards like this.

I hope you're watching carefully and you made those notes as I suggested, because I've got a task for you.

In a moment I'm going to ask you to pause the video, but not yet.

And you're going to see at the bottom some words that will appear.

With those words, you're going to need to place them in the missing gaps of this paragraph.

If they fall, open their airways by placing a on their forehead, and lifting the tip of their chin with 2, moving the tongue away from the back of the throat.

If a, injury is possible, place hands either side of their and use fingertips to lift the angle of the, upwards without moving the head.

Pause this video now and write out the paragraph using the words that you see now at the bottom to fill in those blanks.

Press play when you're ready to resume and we'll check the answers.

Welcome back.

How did you find that? Difficult or easy? Okay, well let's find out how you did, shall we? I'm going to read the paragraph again, but this time with the words that were missing now no longer missing in it.

Let's see how it should have sounded.

If they fall unconscious, open their airway by placing a hand on the forehead and lifting the tip of the chin with two fingers, moving the tongue away from the back of the throat.

If a spinal injury is possible, place hands either side of the head and use the fingertips to lift the angle of the jaw upwards without moving the head.

How did you do? Tick the ones you got right and any that you didn't, that's okay, just change the answer to the correct answer that you see on the screen now.

We've checked the danger and opened up the airway.

It's now time for our next stage, which is breathing.

Again watch me demonstrate how we do this in the next slide.

But don't forget, you might want to take those notes again.

At this part of the lesson, I'm now showing you how we check for the breathing.

I do this by going down like so but leaving a gap between my ear, and the mouth of the patient who's on the floor.

What I'm checking for for around 10 seconds is to see if I can see the chest moving slowly up and down, as you would expect from normal breathing and if I can feel the breath on my ear.

You should also be able to hear the patient on the floor breathing.

Now, if like my patient is here, breathing normally, not gasping for breath, we would then move on to the recovery position and we'll cover this in a future lesson.

Let's see how closely you were listening.

You should be checking for breath against your cheek or ear for 10 seconds, true or false? Point now to what you think is the correct answer.

Three, two, one, let's find out.

Of course, it's true.

Well done if you got that right.

And if not, just note it down on your notebook so that you remember for next time.

So after checking the danger then, oh, what was it? Remind me, what did we do first after danger? Of course, airways, and then? Danger, airways, what was next? Can you remember? Breathing? We've now come to a final part of assessing our casualty, and that's called circulation.

I mentioned earlier that we need to check if the breathing is normal.

And if our casualty has irregular breathing or is gasping for breath, then that is not counted as normal breathing.

This usually happens when the heart stops, meaning that so does the blood flow around the body, which results in what we call cardiac arrest.

At the sign of this, or if the patient has stopped breathing we would go into what's called chest compressions as part of something called cardio pulmonary resuscitation or you might've heard it called CPR, which we'll cover in lesson three.

Let's test what we just learned, shall we? So if someone is gasping for breath, is it true or is it false that I should put them into something called the recovery position? If someone has gasping for breath, is it true or is it false that I should put them into something called the recovery position? Point to the answer that you think is correct on your screen now.

In three, two, one.

Let's see what the correct answer was.

Of course the answer is false, and this is really important to remember.

If your casualty isn't breathing normally, you should begin chest compressions immediately and as I mentioned earlier, we will cover CPR including what chest compressions are in lesson three.

I can't believe we've come to the end of our lesson already but before we go, let's do one final recap together.

So what was the first thing we need to check when assessing a casualty.

Can you remember? Say it out loud in three, two, one.

Well done, we need to check for danger.

So once we've checked the danger, what's the next thing we needed to do? Can you remember? Again, tell me in three, two, one.

Well done if you said ensure that the airway is open, remember a, for airway.

So we've checked for danger, we've done airway, what's next? You ready to tell me again? Three, two, and one.

Well done if you said, checking breathing.

So we've done danger, we've done airway and we've done breathing.

What's our final step? Can you remember? You know it's coming, three, two, one.

Well done if you said circulation.

We need to ensure that the breathing is normal and taking those further steps if we need to.

Remember assessing a patient is as easy as A, B and C.

Well done for your super hard work today, we've covered so much and you've done really well.

Don't forget now though, that it's time to test all of this knowledge, by doing the exit quiz, which I know as I said at the start, you're going to be amazing at.

Next lesson make sure you come back, because we are going to be looking at the recovery position.

See you soon!.