What are the relationship between poisoning and accidental first aid

Essentially speaking, poisoning itself is one of the top three accidental first aid scenarios with high incidence. The core logic of the connection between the two is to embed the specific intervention requirements for poisoning into the standard process of general accidental first aid, while avoiding secondary injuries caused by special operations.

Last week, I and the 120 police dispatched an incident to a high school student who accidentally ate the "Internet Celebrity Diet Candy" purchased online and was poisoned. When giving her first aid, her classmates only focused on searching for "poisoning first aid methods" on the Internet and poured soapy water to induce vomiting. They forgot to tap her shoulder and call her name to assess her consciousness. By the time we arrived, she was already unconscious and choked with a lungful of vomit. It took almost three minutes to clear her airway, which almost delayed subsequent detoxification treatment.

Speaking of inducing vomiting, this is also the most controversial point in the connection between poisoning first aid and general accident first aid. The older generation of first aid experts always say that when poisoning occurs, vomiting should be induced first, and more vomiting is better. However, in recent years, more and more clinical data show that ordinary people without professional training induce vomiting, or the digestive tract is burned when they accidentally eat strong acids and alkalis. It is even more serious, or if you encounter a patient who is already unconscious, the probability of vomit choking into the airway and causing suffocation is higher than the damage caused by the absorption of the poison itself. Therefore, the new pre-hospital first aid guidelines no longer recommend ordinary people to induce vomiting on their own. It is safer to call 120 first to clarify the type, amount and time of the poison, and follow the dispatcher's instructions.

In fact, aside from these controversial special operations, the underlying logic of poisoning first aid and ordinary accident first aid are completely consistent. Just like you need to flush cold water first for burns, and turn on the switch first for electric shock. The first step for all poisoning first aid is to cut off contact with the poison first. For ingestion, stop eating the suspected poison first, and inhaling it. If you are intoxicated, quickly move to an open and ventilated place upwind, and if you are in contact with the poison, immediately take off the clothes stained with poison and flush the skin with running water. This is essentially the principle of "stop loss first and deal with it later" in general accident first aid. You can completely regard this step as the direct implementation of accident first aid logic in poisoning scenarios.

When I was doing first-aid science training on the street, an owner of a home-cooked restaurant specifically asked me what to do if a customer was poisoned by drinking fake wine. I told him that he didn’t need to remember too complicated special operations. First, press the general emergency button. Rescue requires feeling the pulse, checking consciousness, and checking whether the airway is clear. If the vital signs are stable, don't feed the patient blindly to induce vomiting. Remember clearly how much the guest drank and what brand he drank, and save the remaining wine for medical care. It is much more effective than messing around. Later, he actually encountered a customer who drank fake wine mixed with industrial alcohol sent by an unscrupulous supplier. He followed this method. When he was sent to the hospital, the doctor said that the information was accurate, the antidote was used in a timely manner, and the customer did not suffer any sequelae.

To put it bluntly, poisoning and accidental first aid are not two separate systems. You don’t have to worry about which operations are specific to poisoning and which are general accidental first aid rules. When something happens, you should calm down first, pay attention to the most important vital signs of the person, such as breathing and consciousness, and then deal with the special situation of poisoning in a targeted manner. Basically, there will be no big mistakes.