DIY Emergency Medical Treatment
Posted on: 27 October 2016
While you should never try and do a doctor's job under normal circumstances, you may experience or witness an injury while far from civilization. You may need to perform a procedure to help someone until you can take them to a hospital or clinic. During an emergency, you may need to do the following.
Stitches
If you are camping and someone slices open your foot or hand, you can stitch up a wound yourself if binding it with cloth or gauze does not stop the bleeding. If you are forced to stitch up someone else or even yourself, you need to carefully clean the wound with bottled or boiled water. Then you will need to sterilize a needle and use thread or dental floss to close the wound. This procedure may be a bit painful, but it should "hold" the patient until you reach a doctor. Seeking professional treatment afterward is absolutely necessary to reduce the chances of infection, so don't assume your DIY job is sufficient.
Tracheotomy
A tracheotomy can be performed by non-medical personnel, but only during a true emergency. If you are in an isolated area and a companion begins to choke, you should first try to perform the Heimlich maneuver to dislodge anything stuck in the esophagus. You can also try pounding the victim's back. If your patient is turning blue, and you are unable to help the patient breathe by exerting pressure, you might need to try a tracheotomy. You would need to find the small space between the victim's Adam's apple and cricoid cartilage, the bulge right below the Adam's apple. Then you would make a small slit horizontally at that spot, using whatever cutting tool you had handy.
Once that was accomplished, you would insert a straw or other small tube into the esophagus to allow the victim to breathe. Obviously, the patient would need to be taken to the hospital or a medical clinic as soon as humanly possible. Although you would only undertake this procedure in the most serious circumstances, your willingness to do so could save someone's life.
If you spend a lot of time far from civilization, you should learn to do a few medical procedures. You should perform these procedures only when you have no other choice, of course. Knowing a few basics can be a temporary medical fix for small issues and a life-saving move for big ones. Before you go off the grid, study up on emergency procedures online.
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