Extreme First Aid and a few squid

After finishing the field course in Debyshire I had a day in the office learning about identifying squid beaks (not such an easy task), which is a vital skill for my job as I have to identify what the albatross have been eating from diet samples.

The albatross can't really digest the squid beaks (the only hard part of a squid) so tend to regurgitate them. It is then my job of gathering them up and figuring out which is which species. I've included a picture of a squid beak so you know what I am talking about (the ones I'm looking at are a lot smaller as albatross can't eat squid that big!). Luckily for me I had one of the Antarctic squid beak world experts as my teacher who has even handly written a book with lots of pictures to help me! Thanks Jose!

I wasn't back in the office for long and headed down to Plymouth for the advanced first aid training course at the hospital where all of the Antarctic doctors are based. There were only 8 of us on this course, and I was the only one from Bird Island so the pressure is definitely on me if anything does go wrong on the island (I'm just hoping I'm not the injured one!).

The course was over three days- the first was a recap of CPR and assessing a casualty, we spent the afternoon discussing the best drugs to give to people (and how much), using machines to monitor heart rate, oxygen saturation and blood pressure, and gluing and sealing up wounds.

The second day was extracting casualties from vehicles and then we got to practice our new skills on a more realistic dummy than the resus Annies (which are just a torso and head you can breathe into and do compressions on). This dummy speaks, breathes, has pulses, blinks, swells, shakes, pupils dilate, everything!

Our dummy

We were given scenarios and had to go into the room and get on with it! There was a window with one way glass so the doctors could see what we were doing, and they had computers that could tell them how much oxygen we were getting into the patient, and how effective our chest compressions were. It seems the most important thing to do for most situations is check the airway and give them oxygen. We played through a variety of scenarios including anaphylactic shock, heart attack, chainsaw wound, damaged lung. At the end of the day we all felt more confident and had a great time in the process.

The dummy having a bit of extra oxygen and keeping his head supported in case of spinal injury

The dummys control room- where the doctor can make him do all sorts of interesting things like go into cardiac arrest! They can also watch us through the one way glass.

The dummy when he was feeling a bit better!

 On the final day we learnt to put plaster casts on (only for ankles and wrists- so I hope no one breaks anything else!). It was the first time I'd had a cast on in my life! The wrists are definitely easier to do than the ankles.

We then went into A&E for a couple of hours, where we got to wear scrubs, so looked like real professionals! I was just hoping people wouldn't ask me too many questions being a fake doctor and all!

It was really good to be in A&E watching how the department works. Within a few minutes of being there we heard a cardiac arrest was coming in, we were asked if we wanted to come into the resuss room to see how it all works. We agreed, and before we knew it Daniel and I were deciding who was going to go first with the chest compressions! Talk about being thrown in at the deep end! We waited nervously for the patient to arrive, and then took our turns doing the chest compressions in between shocks from the defib. It was certainly an experience, and I'm really glad I did it as I now know what it's like to do it for real.

After that dramatic start to our shift we followed the doctors around and saw an eye injury, assessed a man with chest pains (we got to do his blood pressure, pulse and oxygen saturation measurements) and looked at some x-rays of a broken wrist.

All that was before lunch! In the afternoon we learnt how to inject local anaesthetic and suture (stich), which was quite enjoyable- I think it helps that I have done sewing before. We also learnt how to put a cannula into someones arm, starting off with a fake arm that was wired up to some "blood", and then got to practice on a real victim (I mean patient). I couldn't get any blood out of my first patient but was successful with my second. We also got to see a "bone gun" which looked a very scary torture implement and is used to put fluids/drugs direct into your bone marrow (thankfully we didn't have to practice that one on each other).

Stitching practice- luckily not on each other.

The arm! We used this for practicing putting in a cannula, it has it's own blood supply so you can actually get blood out of it.

All in all it was an amazing course, and I came away thinking I may have chosen the wrong career- but I didn't hold that thought for too long. I can't wait to get out and see those albatross on Bird Island, less than a month to go!