First Aid Principles and How to Respond in an Emergency

Subject Area: Health and Illness - Natural Science

You never know when you or someone close to you will get hurt, which is why learning basic first aid principles is important, even for those of a young age.

Knowing exactly what to do in different scenarios will streamline the first aid process and allow the victim to get better sooner and remain in the best condition possible, until professional medical help can arrive.

It may not seem important for a young kid of only 8-9 years old to know how to handle emergency situations because there will likely be an adult nearby… However, that won’t always be the case. They may have been left alone for a short period of time. Or even the supervising adult could be the one injured. In addition, during emergency situations, many adults can even freeze under pressure and not know what to do.

It’s important in any emergency situation for one person to step up and take charge by instructing nearby individuals of what they need to do to help, and providing the appropriate first aid in response to the victim’s injury.

Thus, learning important vocabulary and first aid procedures, can be extremely beneficial to both the victim and the first aid provider in ensuring the safety and well-being of both individuals.

My Personal Conclusion:

When I was just a few years older than my students, I was put in a situation at a restaurant in which a woman collapsed suddenly. The people she was with were panicking and the other restaurant patrons didn’t know how to respond. So I knew I had to. I stepped up and took charge, telling specific people around her what to do while I knelt beside the woman to apply first aid. After several long minutes, professional medical help arrived, and thanks to the first aid procedures, the medical technicians were able to fully revive her.

When I walked into that restaurant with my family that day, I had no idea that such an event would happen, but thanks to my knowledge of first aid procedures, I was able to help save that woman’s life.

This is why I feel like it’s crucial for every young person to know first aid. For the young eight to nine year olds of my 4th grade class, I knew teaching them something as serious as CPR would be difficult for them to comprehend. So instead, I chose to give them a stepping stone, a solid foundation of first aid knowledge that could still certainly be beneficial because you never know when something could happen to someone near you.

I created a lesson plan (found above) for the one hour long class period I would have with the students. With the wide range of things I wanted to cover, this was an important step in the process as it allowed me to grasp just how long to spend on each section.

I taught the same lesson twice, one for each group of the 4th grade Primary class. I mixed videos, worksheets, oral presentations, and first hand practice in order to teach the students in a variety of ways that would appeal to each student’s learning style.

After collecting the worksheets at the end of class, I found that the majority of students understood the concepts and vocabulary well. Though one thing to note is that there was some confusion between the words: “Gash” and “Gauze.” So LA’s/Teachers who decide to do this lesson in the future, should take special care to make the differences of those two words clear.

Upon finishing the class, I would change little to the procedure of it all as the lesson plan ended up being perfectly timed. The one thing I would’ve changed, if I could, would be to bring more supplies (t-shirts and first aid kits) so that multiple students in the large class of 24 kids could look at them and participate at once. 

Overall, it was a fun and rewarding experience that was both fun and educational for the students involved.