Child Emergencies

This post was originally published on golifelog.com.

I just came back home from my quarterly paramedic training. This time we talked about child emergencies. Pseudocroup/Croup, asthma, drowning and a few others. As always, it was quite interesting. Although I learned all of those disease patterns back when I became a paramedic, there are always new treatments or new guidelines.

We finished with some CPR practise, as children aren’t small adults and guidelines differ. Interestingly, there is no fixed child CPR practise in contrast to adult CPR. Every two years I have to be in front of a doctor showing of that I know the current guidelines for adult CPR. On the other hand, adult CPR situations are way more common than resuscitation a child, luckily I was spared from that in 10 years of being a paramedic.

It’s not that I fear that I don’t know what steps would be necessary, but how I would feel afterwards. Yes, I can turn off emotions for the duration of an emergency situation / mission, but eventually, they come after you.