.....................................................................................................
10 First Aid Mistakes That Can Do More Damage Than Good
..................................................................................................... Situations where we need first aid because they are urgent or do not need a hospital are bound to happen. We must be prepared to face such situations to save what can be saved. Nonetheless, we should avoid doing the following first aid mistakes in order not to fix a problem and cause another, not fix the problem at all, or make the problem worse. 10. Curing Jellyfish Sting with Urine Using pee to handle a jellyfish sting is not only disgusting, but might also be inefficient. Urine is used in this situation for its acidity and since the acidity of urine depends on the meals the of the one who pees, there is no guarantee that it is acidic enough to work. A less filthy, reliable first aid would be vinegar. 9. Putting Butter on Burns Putting butter on a burn is a great mistake because oils retain heat which is something that we surely don’t want. It is better to leave butter in the fridge for edible use only.
8. Using Tourniquets to Stop Bleeding Tourniquets do stop bleeding from a cut; however, without proper use, they can cause more damage. Since tourniquets stop blood flow from the extremities, arms or legs, they are used on, they can cause tissue damage in the whole extremity. Prolonged use of a tourniquet can lead to something as tragic as amputation.
7. Handling a Bee Sting the Wrong Way There is a wide spread assumption that a bee stinger must be scraped off using like a card. This causes you to spend valuable time to get a scraping object. The proper first aid strategy to follow is to remove the stinger as fast as possible in any way available. 6. Warming Up by Drinking Alcohol Drinking alcohol may warm you up but only temporarily. In fact, alcohol can lead to hypothermia in cold weather. A better, delicious alternative is drinking hot chocolate to warm up. 5. Placing an Object in the Mouth of Someone Suffering from A Seizure When we see someone experiencing a seizure, we might want to do anything to help them. Knowing that seizure sufferers often bite their tongues during the seizure, people usually grab something to place it in their mouth to bite on instead. This act can be very dangerous as the placed object may block the patient’s airway, so it is better to refrain from doing it. 4. Preventing Head Injured Individuals from Sleeping A head injury may cause its sufferer to fall into sleep. Waking up the injured is not going to help. So instead of doing your best to wake someone who just had a head injury, try reaching a paramedic to offer appropriate help. 3. Moving Your Head Back While Nose Bleeding The sight of blood coming out from your nose might be horrific, but leaning back does not stop the bleeding. This action causes you to swallow the blood. This will lead you to throw up the blood that you had swallowed which isn’t a pleasant feeling at all. 2. Cooling a Fever Using Alcohol Alcohol is a volatile substance that evaporates with the slightest heat and cools off the place where it had been placed. Although this sounds like a good plan to cool a fever, putting alcohol on skin surface may mean that some of it may get absorbed and result in unfavorable consequences. 1. Putting Raw Meat on a Black Eye The reason people take something from the freezer such as a raw steak to place on a black eye is to use the cold of that steak. There are lots of cold alternatives like ice or a bag of frozen vegetables that can be used on a black eye without the risk of exposed the eye to E coli.
First Aid Mistakes, Health, health care, Top 10