Hospital mattresses are soft and pliable. Great for the patient who wants to be comfortable. But not so great for medical staff if they have to perform CPR.
Performing compressions on someone lying in a soft and pliable mattress will only result in the force going into the mattress and not the body. The standard answer is to get the patient on a crash board first but that requires extra time to roll the patient and position the board. Extra time that is often critical.
But a group of innovative students at Michigan Tech may just have the answer. They have been …read more

How long ago did you first start learning CPR?
Were your CPR instructors strict about the number of compressions and breathes to do? Did they stress the need for ‘x’ number of compressions followed by ‘x’ number of breathes? Did you have trouble finding the carotid pulse? Difficulty getting the breathes in?
Well, you can relax. Things have really changed since the early days of CPR training.
Why?
Well, it turns out that the frequent stopping to breath air into the victim isn’t actually best action. Research has shown that even a second of pausing in compressions can cause a 1% reduction in the …read more

Wow, it seems that people really are suffering with sore, dry feet. I’d love to give you all a pedi-relax set to help make it better. But unfortunately, there are only three to giveaway.
And the random number selector says that the lucky recipients will be…
Angie
Julie Donahue
Kathy Conley
Congratulations to the winners. You should be getting an email shortly with directions on how and where to provide your mailing address.
As for the rest of us, there is always a chance to win again tomorrow.

If your medicine cabinet is like most people’s, it’s harboring all kinds of unused or outdated meds like antibiotics and pain-killers.
Instead of dumping them in the trash or toilet, consider donating them to Flying Doctors or Aid for AIDS, where volunteer medical teams headed to Mexico or Central America will be able to make good use of them.
While the meds may not be 100% potent or effective, the mere presence of any kind of medical intervention for those who have no other options may just save a life. A pretty great alternative to wasting, no?
Thanks in advance for your …read more

It’s just like the old paper cut saying: The smaller the cut, the worse it hurts. With shaving, the smaller the nick, the worse it bleeds. Unless you gash yourself wide open with a brand new razor,then…
Anyway, it happens to all of us. We shave, we nick. But here’s a quick tip on how to stop the bleeding in a hurry:
Step 1: Use a cotton ball or swab to dab a little witch hazel onto the cut. Witch hazel is a natural astringent which tightens surrounding tissues and slows bleeding.
Step 2: Hold an ice cube or ice pack to the …read more

Dang! Another instance where conventional wisdom and years-old treatments have failed us yet again.
Bloody noses – a staple in the lives of kids, sports-playing teens and allergy-ridden adults – are not to be treated by tipping the head back as once was thought. Instead, you are to lower and tip your head forward, catching any wayward bleeding in a tissue.
Why is this? Because tipping the head back will send blood down into the esophagus and potentially into the stomach, which can be irritating and possibly cause vomiting. But by leaning the head forward, you can avoid such issues.
Other treatment …read more

            
They say ‘laughter is the best medicine’ so next time you need to fill up on bandaids and aspirin, skip the traditional products and head over to Help Remedies. They’ve put out some products that will not only cover the cut and fix the headache but will also amuse you….
Got a Headache….Have an Aspirin.

Cut yourself….Here’s a bandaid

By the way, this is a company concerned not only with the envrionment but also society. The packaging is made out of compostable, recycled paper pulp, with a tiny amount of plastic around the pills (an FDA requirement). Plus they plan to give …read more

No one ever wants to be placed in a position where they have to perform CPR on someone. But we all learn just in case. We sweat through the first aid class and try desperately to remember the steps. We worry about how many times we have to breathe into the person, where to push down on the chest, and how often and fast.
But performing CPR has just got a whole lot easier with an American Heart Association announcement Monday that the days of mouth-to-mouth breathing are now over.
Hands Only CPR – calling for help and deep, rapid chest compressions …read more

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So you’re cooking, right? You grab the lid off the pot so fast that it flings itself mercilessly against the inside of your wrist, sending you careening over to the kitchen sink as your dinner burns on the stove. What do you do next?
A) Run the wound under cool water.
B) Call the pizza joint and say to hell with home-cooking forever.
C) Curse so loudly your children gaze at you in horror, then scrunch up their little faces and run out of the room.
D) Schlack the burn with a bit of honey.
While your natural instincts might steer you toward B …read more

I saw the heading ‘Heart Attack in Casino Safer Than One in Hospital ‘ and thought that makes no sense. Hospitals have standard protocol for treating heart attacks and cardiac arrests. Protocol that medical staff are well trained in. Mock arrests and frequent education ensure that they are kept up-to-date with emergency resuscitation procedures. But for all that, it turns out that hospitals are not the safest place to have a heart attack or cardiac arrest.
According to an article recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine about a third of patients in hospital who suffer cardiac arrest don’t …read more