Paramedics Debunk 12 First Aid Myths

Absolutely, let's debunk this misconception:You should clean your wounds with rubbing alcohol:Using rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) directly on wounds can actually be harmful. It can delay healing, damage new tissue, and cause pain and irritation. Instead, clean wounds with mild soap and water to gently remove dirt and bacteria. If necessary, use an antiseptic solution recommended by healthcare professionals.

Hi my name is randy lee i'm a paramedic here in new york city and i've been working ems for 11 years hi my name is lorena concepcion martinez i am a paramedic here in new york city also with randy for the past 19 years and today we'll be debunking myths about first aid ready let's go if someone gets a concussion keep them awake this is an old wives tale they associated someone having a concussion and going into a coma and not being able to wake up so that's why they used to say to keep everybody awake now we figured out that the sleeping does not cause the coma when someone has a concussion it is considered a type of tbi traumatic brain injury you do want to monitor them though you want to make sure there's no deficit no changes so things you're going to be looking out for would be slurred speech vomiting unsteady gait which means you're like wobbly when you walk a little dizzy yeah you don't want any of that so if you think that's a problem and it's not self-resolving then yeah take them to the hospital let them do a cat scan let them make sure that the patient's not having an internal bleed in their brain you should put something into the mouth of someone having a seizure negative this is a major no-no this is another old wives tale of people thinking that the patient having a seizure was gonna swallow their tongue it's more muscle spasms and clenching of the jaw so you don't really have to worry about the patient swallowing the tongue or anything along those lines that whole time you're talking i tried to swallow my tongue i couldn't do it so it's not true when someone's having a seizure they're having these uh fasciculations this tightening of the muscles what'll happen is they'll clinch to their jaw and if you put something in their mouth they'll break their teeth they'll break their jaw back your finger off yeah don't do it you also want to let the seizure pass you want to make sure once they've stopped you can roll them on their side and just kind of be supportive until ems arrives to help most seizures will resolve themselves after say 30 seconds to a minute but if you have something called status epilepticus the patient will end up having continuous seizures which will affect their breathing that point is where you need that advanced medical care advanced life support paramedics like randy and i to come in and give medications to actually try to subside the seizures and transport the patient to the hospital as quickly as possible slap a choking person on the back this myth does come from how you treat an infant or a child that is choking because we do back slaps as we call them in an infant or a child but in adult you want to emphasize on doing the heimlich maneuver wait hold on i have a thing for this so imagine this guy's choking we're gonna try the back slap thing yeah not really working if you come across a person choking try to encourage them to keep coughing so randy here is gonna show you the universal choking sign which is this is smiling clearly but you know they'll be like this that's the universal choking sign do not i stress do not give them anything in the drink you want them to keep coughing until they clear that airway and if it becomes completely obstructed that they can't get any air movement they can't speak and they start turning blue it's time for that heimlich and definitely 911. depending on who you follow the protocol for treating choking is a little bit different the american red cross recommends five back blows followed by five abdominal thrusts and repeat but lorena and i follow the american heart association protocols so we go straight to the abdominal thrusts when you're doing the abdominal thrust like the old name of the maneuver you're gonna make a fist so this goes right to the navel just slightly above you're gonna do a pulling up motion like a j i'm gonna squeeze with a lot of force so unlike the movies and stuff this actually takes a lot of effort you can't just do it in one shot you're going to be really tired doing this and it's probably going to hurt the person as well but it's better than them choking to death there you go when you do this please make sure to keep your head to the side because if not the patient will bang you on your nose and you might end up with a bloody nose boom always suck the venom out of a snake bite i'm sorry um i don't know how to answer this properly it's ill-advised to ever have an answer in her life where sucking something out is like your go-to thing if you drop food coloring into a cup of water it's very difficult to get it back together it's impossible to get it all out so the same applies for venom on a snake bite once it's in it's in the bloodstream it's gonna circulate so it's really not gonna do much the other thing is stay away from putting any kind of tourniquet it's gonna create more damage than what it's gonna help if someone's gonna be bit by a venomous snake sucking on the wound you're gonna get such a minimal amount out it's not going to do anything and then you leave them exposed to infection because your mouth is probably dirty if you encounter someone who's had a venomous keyword venomous snake bite you definitely want to call as soon as possible and get that patient to the hospital you want to go to a venom center or a bite center and it's particularly a hospital that has all kinds of anti-venoms antidotes for this kind of incident cpr requires mouth to mouth cpr does not require mouth to mouth there are procedures of just doing chest compressions that allow you to make sure that blood circulating through the whole body to get oxygenated blood to the brain that's the goal it buys you time for us paramedics to show up a couple years back cpr was required mouth-to-mouth but do you really want to put your mouth on a total complete stranger the american heart association and everyone else who teaches cpr have been doing a strong emphasis on hands only it eliminates the transmissions of any communicable diseases or anything along all those lines to do cpr properly you're going to want to expose the chest down so you have access to the bare chest palm your hand it's under the chest you're going to wrap your fingers around each other and then you're just going to push straight down for an adult it's about two inches or so but basically just going to keep that going on for 100 beats per minute there is a song that we utilize all the time historically we use staying alive staying alive staying alive so when you're doing cpr the main thing you want to just maintain is that those compressions are going to be consistent anytime you stop that threshold goes down it causes a huge amount of detriments to the body you got to start doing it immediately you got like six minutes before you have irreversible damage to the brain so start cpr quick give them a good shot after getting stabbed take out the sharp object from the body this is from movies um this is stupid don't do this do not remove it you will cause a lot more tissue damage and cause a lot more bleeding so please i stress this please do not remove it leave it in place you should stabilize it so it doesn't go wiggling around inside because any kind of movement to the foreign object will create more damage it's great movies though it's hysterical drama effect it's just like oh why no i don't get it yeah you have to be medically trained to use a defibrillator it'll make you feel more confident but you really don't what you see out there they're not actually defibrillators like you see in the movies paddles and all that craziness they don't let's show them okay so this is an aed this is an automatic external defibrillator a defibrillator basically shocks the heart all municipal buildings have these in every location so the best thing about defibrillators is that anyone can use them all you have to do is open it up and press the power button and it will literally tell you step by step what needs to be done open it up adult mode remove all clothing from patient's chest did you pull the red handle sure doing pictures on pads there are photos to show you exactly where you're supposed to put these things on you want to use this as quickly as possible once you know the person is in cardiac arrest if the person is unresponsive but you're not sure you still want to use this and put it on the patient's chest if the patient's alive it will tell you not to shock analyzing heart rhythm provide chest compressions to the beat and continue cpr don't be afraid to ask someone to go get the defibrillator or the aed put butter on a burn to heal it what are you a piece of toast and that would be a no you do not put butter on a burn it's going to trap the heat and ultimately the heat is going to keep radiant so it will continue to burn basically you want to stop the burning process no matter what it is it could be a first degree burn to a third degree burn you want to just eliminate that right so just cool water keyword cool not cold you just want to keep it clean sterile and cool it down seek medical care if you get frostbite on your hands rub them together to warm them up ooh i would say you don't want to do that i went from hot to cold yeah we did go from hot to cold if you do have frostbite on your fingertips or toes which is usually where it starts you never want to rub them the friction will cause more damage to the skin tissue and the cells below it so you want to warm them up slowly coming into a warmer environment taking off any wet clothing on it and just gradually warming it up so how do you know the difference though between just being cold and having frostbite you'll have this waxy type deal on your hands your hands are going to be a little more puffy basically you're going to be blistered up imagine like just a really bad burn except the opposite because it's cold once you cross that frostbite threshold it's something that you definitely need to go to the emergency room to be treated by a physician because the amount of damage that can be done by treating it incorrectly can be irreversible you should clean your wounds with rubbing alcohol ouch i'm sorry this is painful just to think about it and that would be a no rubbing alcohol is gonna be very painful so please stay away from rubbing alcohol just simple soap and water if you have antibacterial soap even better it cleans it sure but why go through the trouble of like actually hurting yourself essentially you also want to make sure that the wound stays moist and alcohol has this drying property that's not going to be conducive to healing anyway keep it simple soap and water if it's an abrasion a simple cut a day or two with a band-aid is always good just to control whatever bleeding you have that's the main key you want to do the triple antibiotic and let it get free air the air will actually help stimulate scabbing and scabbing is a natural barrier that the body creates so it can heal and regenerate wow cardiac arrest and a heart attack are the same thing they're not the same thing cardiac arrest means that your heart stopped they are no longer conscious they are no longer breathing and their heart is no longer beating so this is where cpr comes into play heart attack you have an occlusion in your heart the heart is starving for air causing the chest pain you have the ability to get to the hospital you'll have shortness of breath you'll be diaphoretic which means really really sweaty all classic signs of a heart attack not everyone will have the same symptoms so remember call 9-1-1 for either one if you witness a drug overdose put the person in the shower or bath um no because one you have no idea what the person overdosed on any kind of dramatic change to someone's temperature will throw the hemostasis of the body all out of whack what does that mean your body has a regulation of temperature you can't go into any extremes quickly yeah it just makes getting the patient out and treated a lot more difficult if they're like in a bathtub and wet and we as paramedics carry stuff such as narcan to help counteract yes any narcotic overdoses specifically for opioid overdoses but we also have other drugs that help with other types of overdoses so please make sure don't lie about what you took that makes it way harder for us because if you took drug a and you tell us it was drug b we're going to go the wrong route and the treatment will get skewed and then we'll figure it out eventually but then we have to backtrack and then go that route it's it's very dangerous so no shower this is debunked look at all these myths the intention is there everyone wants to help somebody else that's great but you're going to want to get a little education on your back end take a first day of class you don't have to go to a level emt and paramedic and who knows you might be somebody's hero one day