If you have kids at home, you probably worry about their health and safety. You do all you can to keep them safe, but emergencies happen when you least expect it. That's why it's good to learn pediatric CPR. Learning adult CPR is good too, but the techniques differ between the adult and child versions since children have smaller and more fragile bodies. Here are some of the things you'll learn in pediatric CPR classes.
How To Help A Choking Child
Saving a child who is choking is an important skill since your child or a friend of your child could choke on candy or food at any time. When you learn how to do maneuvers that force food back up the throat or sweep food out of the mouth, then you may be able to save your child from severe consequences of being unable to breathe for a prolonged period. Being without oxygen for too long could result in brain damage or even death. Although you should also call for help immediately, by learning pediatric CPR, you can start working on your child while you wait for help to arrive and potentially clear the airway and help your child breathe normally again.
How To Help Your Child With A Heart Condition
If your child has any kind of heart condition or other medical condition that could interfere with proper heart pumping or breathing, then learning CPR can give you peace of mind. Your child may sleep with apnea monitors and be hooked up to other monitoring devices, but those won't do anything but alert you to a problem. When you know CPR, you can spring to action if the worst happens and your child collapses, stops breathing, or has a heart attack.
How To Respond To An Unknown Emergency
When you take pediatric CPR classes, you'll learn different scenarios since you'll need to respond differently depending on what's wrong with your child. If you walk in and find your child unconscious, you won't know if they choked, had a heart attack, or just fainted. Since CPR has the potential to be dangerous, you don't want to do it if your child's heart is beating properly. The classes teach you how to assess your child to determine if they're breathing and their heart is beating so you know if you should start CPR or monitor them until help arrives.
Since many healthcare and childcare workers are required to take pediatric CPR classes, it's fairly easy to find a place that offers the classes. You'll have classroom learning as well as practice on a mannequin so you get a feel for how fast and forceful to be with chest thrusts. This gives you the confidence you need to start CPR in case you ever face an emergency and need to use it. Contact a company like Emergency and Health Training Center today for more information.
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