Teaching plan design for open classes on children’s safety and first aid

It is open to children aged 6-12 and their accompanying parents, and lasts for 90 minutes. The core goal is to "enable children to actively avoid more than 3 types of high-frequency injuries, and parents to correctly handle more than 2 common emergencies in children." It rejects empty theories throughout the process, and 70% of the time is allocated to scenario simulations and practical exercises. Participants do not need to have any medical foundation and can use it after learning.

I have taught this class for nearly 20 times in communities and primary schools, and I have gone through a lot of pitfalls: I first read the pathogenesis of airway obstruction according to the textbook, and the children in the audience couldn't sit still for three minutes and started picking at the rubber.； Later, I followed the standardized drill process on the Internet. One father was so strong that he broke the "ribs" of the simulator. I was so embarrassed that I couldn't say anything for a long time. After slowly figuring out the rules, I changed it to the most adaptable version now.

I never give lectures directly in the first 10 minutes. I will first show three short videos of 15 seconds each - real scenes that I shot in various communities: a little boy in yellow clothes squatting in the blind spot of the front of an SUV to play with marbles, a little girl with braids holding on to the handle of a thermos bottle on the dining table, and a boy in school uniform running wildly in the corridor with a lollipop in his mouth. After playing, I asked the children in the audience, "What are the wrong things these children did just now?" ”, the little hands are raised faster than anything else, and it is much more effective than shouting "Today we are going to talk about safety knowledge" ten times.

Regarding whether to teach young children to perform the Heimlich maneuver, there have always been two different opinions in the industry: One group is firmly opposed, saying that children have little strength and cannot find the right place to exert force, and it is easy to break the opponent's ribs and cause secondary injuries. They only need to teach them to call an adult first when someone chokes.； The other group thinks that they can teach a simplified version. When a child younger than themselves chokes, they can put their knees on the child's stomach and pat the child's upper back. In my current class, I will clearly tell parents both views. What I teach children is "call the adult first, pat the back when the adult is not around, and never rub the belly casually." This does not eliminate the child's willingness to help, but also minimizes the risk.

The content of the middle 60 minutes basically revolves around common common misunderstandings between parents and children. For example, when it comes to treating burns and scalds, I will take a hot water bottle filled with 40-degree warm water and let everyone touch it to feel the pain of low-temperature burns. Then I will explain why many elderly people are accustomed to applying toothpaste and soy sauce. “I won't ask everyone to memorize the five steps of "rinsing off the bubble cap and sending it away". Every time I explain each step, I ask the parents present to follow the steps. For example, if you compare the time it takes to sing "The Lonely Warrior" twice, 15 minutes of doing it at a time, the children can remember it better than the parents. Last time, a mother sent me a message on the third day after class, saying that her child choked on a grape. Her mind went blank at the time, but her hands automatically moved into the Heimlich pose she learned in class, and she coughed up the grape in two strokes. She said that she had watched countless online tutorials before but could not remember them. After practicing three times, she had muscle memory.

The remaining 20 minutes are basically free to ask questions. I deliberately left enough time for everyone to ask questions that cannot be found on the Internet with accurate answers: For example, should you raise your head when you have a nosebleed? I will explain clearly the difference between the old view and the new guideline: in the past, it was said that the reason for raising the head is to avoid blood staining the clothes, but blood will flow down the throat into the trachea or even the stomach, which can easily cause coughing or vomiting. Now it is recommended to lower the head, pinch the hard bones on both sides of the nose with your hands, and apply pressure for three to five minutes to basically stop the bleeding. There is no absolute right or wrong between the two methods, but the applicable scenarios are different.

There is no need to go crazy in preparing materials: several Heimlich manikins of various age groups, a few bags of common foods that can cause choking, such as jelly tomatoes, a few low-temperature patches that simulate burns, some stickers with "Safety Guards" printed on them for children, and a pocket-sized emergency card for parents, which has the three most common emergency treatment steps printed on it. You can put it in your bag and take it out at any time. If it is taught to children aged 3-6 in a kindergarten, the practical part will be replaced by a "find danger" puzzle game. If it is taught to children in the upper grades of elementary school, a simple lesson on bandaging abrasions can also be added, which can be adjusted at any time according to the audience.

In fact, after doing this class for so long, my biggest feeling is that many times when children have accidents, it is not because parents are not paying attention, but because they really do not know the correct method: there is a mixed bag of information on the Internet. What is wrong today is wrong tomorrow, and ordinary people cannot tell which one is reliable. To put it bluntly, the purpose of our open classes is to put the most practical and risk-free method into everyone's hands. Even if only one person out of a hundred uses it, the class is not in vain.