Caring for children, whether it is part of an occupation such as babysitting or a necessity within everyday life, is one of the most important responsibilities an individual will ever face. As the most vulnerable fraction of the population, children need attentive care to ensure they remain secure and healthy in any situation.
Whether you are caring for your own children, looking after your brothers and sisters, or babysitting for someone else, your primary responsibility as a provider of care is to the safety, health, and welfare of the individuals you are looking after. That is why it is essential for those who care for children to learn basic first aid techniques and CPR.
Administering CPR to Children
Although the basics may appear to be the same, it is important to remember that adults, and young children may require a different level of care. If you are caring for infants, newborns, or toddlers, you should make sure your training covers cardiopulmonary resuscitation tailored to those age groups. Children are typically the most vulnerable to choking hazards, so when a parent hires a babysitter, one of the first things they will need to consider is how capable he or she is at dealing with emergency situations.
Can the babysitter apply a bandage, administer first aid, and perform CPR on a child in need? Although choking tends to be the most common factor which comes to mind when someone attempts to think of a reason why a child’s heartbeat or breathing may stop, some of the other reasons that CPR may need to be performed on a child include:
- Electrical shock
- Blood infection
- Serious injury or head trauma
- Lung disease
Why CPR is Critical
CPR, or Cardiopulmonary resuscitation, is administered to an individual after they have experienced respiratory or cardiac arrest. In simple terms, it is a procedure most often utilized when a person stops breathing, or their heart stops beating. Learning CPR could mean the difference between life and death to the child you are babysitting in an emergency situation, and it typically involves chest compressions to keep the child’s blood circulation, as well as rescue breathing to pump oxygen into their lungs.
In the US, anywhere up to 1,000 people die each and every day simply because they have suffered from a cardiac arrest with no-one nearby equipped with the right training to provide the help they need.
Why Babysitters need to Know CPR
Some people think that as a babysitter, it is not their responsibility to learn these skills, as if a disaster was to strike, they would simply call for the aid of the emergency services and allow a trained paramedic to perform CPR instead. However, what many fail to remember is that even in the best of circumstances, it can take an ambulance as long as twelve minutes to respond to an emergency call.
According to medical studies, within four minutes of an arrest, an individual can begin to suffer from brain tissue death, and after ten minutes that damage is usually regarded to be certain and irreversible. Over 95% of all victims who suffer from cardiac arrest will die before they ever have a chance to reach the hospital, and while time is being spent waiting for emergency care to arise, the chances of a child surviving an attack quickly begins to fall.
As a provider of child care, you have the responsibility to do everything you can to look after and ensure the safety of the child that is under your supervision. With CPR training, you can be sure that in a time of emergency, you can give the child you are looking after the best fighting chance of surviving.