The relationship between first aid and emergency health is

First aid is the front-end core carrier of the emergency health system. The two are a symbiotic relationship covering the entire process of "risk prediction - emergency treatment - subsequent recovery" - emergency health without first aid is a castle in the air without actual combat capabilities, and first aid without the support of the emergency health system is just scattered personal behavior, which cannot cover a wide range of sudden health risks.

I came across a real example when I was doing free clinics in the community in the past two months: Uncle Zhang, who lived in Building 3, walked to the gate of the community while carrying vegetables and suddenly suffered a heart attack. Xiao Zhou, who happened to own a fresh food store next to him, had participated in a free first aid training organized by the street a while ago and rushed over to perform chest compressions. The property management staff fetched the AED placed at the gate in two minutes. By the time 120 arrived, Uncle Zhang had resumed weak spontaneous breathing. Later, the attending doctor said that if he had been delayed by 3 minutes, he would probably still be in a vegetative state even if he was rescued. What’s even more interesting is that after Uncle Zhang recovered, he took the initiative to sign up to be a first aid promoter in the community. He told everyone he met that he wanted to learn CPR. Even his grandson in elementary school could accurately explain the key points of the Heimlich maneuver. This is actually the most vivid epitome of the mutual promotion between the two: the actual results of first aid have in turn promoted the popularization of emergency health awareness, and the pre-training of emergency health has provided real manpower support for the implementation of first aid.

In fact, there have always been two different focuses on the positioning of the two in the field of public health. Most scholars who do research on chronic disease prevention and control and public health policies tend to "prioritize prevention" and believe that the core of emergency health should be placed on the front end: free ECG monitoring for people over 65 years old, distribution of emergency health kits to high-risk families, and emergency health knowledge classes in primary and secondary schools to nip risks in the bud as much as possible. First aid is only a "last resort to fix leaks."” ； But most of the doctors who have been on the front line of the emergency department don’t think so. Director Li, the emergency department director of the central hospital I know, said in our last chat: “No matter how good your prevention is, you can’t stop someone from choking on food, having a child get stuck in jelly, or passing out from heat stroke while shopping in the summer. When life and death hang in the balance for just a few minutes, first aid is the only thing that can pull people back. Without this front-end line of defense, no matter how perfect the emergency health system behind it is, it will be useless. ”To be honest, these two views are not right or wrong at all, they just stand in different positions. If we really come together, we can handle things more comprehensively.

The most common misunderstanding that we ordinary people make is to regard these two as "the matter of the Health Commission" and "the matter of the hospital" and have nothing to do with us. Last summer I took my child to a water park and encountered a six- or seven-year-old child who slipped and drowned in the deep water. When he was fished out, his face was purple. The lifeguard immediately rushed to perform water control and chest compressions. He coughed a few words and started crying. He was later sent to the hospital to check if he was okay. Think about it, it takes at least 20 minutes to drive 120 from the city to the water park on the outskirts of the city. If you wait for a professional to come, you can't even imagine the consequences. There was also news a while ago that a young mother fed jelly to her two-year-old child and her airway became stuck. She panicked and ran to the hospital with her child in her arms, but the child disappeared on the way. If she had even known the general movements of the Heimlich maneuver, she would not have regrets for the rest of her life. The National Center for Disease Control and Prevention has previously released data showing that there are more than 540,000 sudden cardiac deaths in my country every year, 80% of which occur outside the hospital, and the success rate of out-of-hospital first aid is less than 1%. If first aid training can be included in the emergency health popularization content of ordinary people, and there are people around who dare to save and know how to save, the success rate can be directly increased to more than 30%.

When I took the Red Cross First Aid Certificate test last year, the teacher who taught me was an emergency nurse who had been working as an emergency nurse for more than 20 years. I still remember what she said: “I am teaching you not to become a miracle doctor, but also to prevent the situation from getting worse before professionals come. ”Now I keep a palm-sized first-aid kit in my bag all year round, containing iodophor cotton pads, hemostatic patches, and a small card with the key points of the Heimlich maneuver and CPR movements printed on it. Either I want to be a hero, or when I really encounter something, at least I won't just stand around and panic.

In fact, to put it bluntly, the relationship between the two has never been about one containing the other, but a relationship that is tied together: emergency health provides first aid with training, equipment, and follow-up connections, and first aid puts the protective net of emergency health into every emergency scene and into the hands of ordinary people. When an emergency happens, one more person who knows first aid will have one more rope that can pull the person back. This is the most practical meaning of emergency health, isn't it?