Host: What should you do if someone nearby is having a medical emergency?
Dr. Thaddeus Bell: The first thing that you must do if you see someone collapsing front of you, is to get through a telephone and call 911. Before you do anything, it is very important to have professional help on the way.
Now when you make the call, you should be prepared to tell the operator, your location and be prepared to tell the operator what is going on and as much about the patient as you possibly can. Stay calm, because the whole process can be very, very nerve wracking. But the most important thing to remember is to make the call dial 911, give the location, and give your telephone number in event that she needs to call you back, and then get back to assisting the patient to do as much as you know how to do for the patient. But the most important thing that you need to do is to call 911, be calm because the whole process can be very, very nerve wracking, particularly when there are lot of things going on around you.
Host: Is calling 911 first more important than giving CPR?
Dr. Thaddeus Bell: Particularly for patients who have had acute cardiac event, in other words, they are having a heartache. So if you can recognize the symptoms and you know that they're having a heartache, then you definitely want to call 911 and then you want to do what you need to do for the patient.
We now have some news standards that they call Bystanders' CPR, in other words, you can -- once you may call 911 and you feel that the patient has had a heartache or the patient is stop breathing, then you can start chest compressions, almost immediately and we know now that those patients do just as well as doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation as well as chest compressions. But if you don't do anything, if you call 911 and give accurate information, the patient's chance of surviving, once the emergency personnel have gotten there, have increased significantly if you make the call immediately.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services