4000 people die and 2.7 million are injured a year out of simple home accidents and these numbers can be decreased by simple steps if practiced correctly and will help to reduce the consequences of many injuries and give basic treatment till the professional health care arrives.
Here are some common situations that people most of the time act wrongly through it:
1. When someone gets electrically shocked and found fainted holding a power socket. The step of holding his hand and moving him away from the electricity source is so wrong. The missing part is to avoid touching him barehanded, instead use any wooden object as a barrier and next is to shut down the main electric power supply
2. For any burn, add egg white, toothpaste or milk and you are good to go?! No, it is a common mistake, Egg, toothpaste or milk is prevented from usage on any kind of burn. Anything that will be rubbed on the burned area can cause a contamination to the skin. Instead you should moisturize this area by sterile or running water for 10 minutes and then use any burn ointment. if the patient had any other symptom recovery should start immediately
3. Snakebites first approach is to cut and suck out the poison?
This one is so common, but again the answer is no. What you have to do instead is to make the patient calm down and fix his body from moving as much as possible to prevent the poison from spreading through his body, then take him to the hospital and if possible try to get with you the snake to know the type of the snake in order to know the venom
4. A dog’s bite can never kill anybody is such a wrong myth. Because if any dog bite you while he is infected with rabies virus, he can pass it to you as well through his saliva or if you licked the bitten area or scratching it. The dark side to this virus is its fatality while actually the symptoms are mild like fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, sore throat, loss of appetite and general muscular pain
5. Nose bleeds and tilting your head backwards goes hand in hand in many societies but again it is untrue as you can swallow the blood or much worse blood goes to respiratory system and if it got clotted there, then it can cause a serious problem which is suffocation. The correct way to handle nose bleeds is to press just below the nose bone for 10 mins while tilting the head a little bit forward and it is important also to visit a doctor to know the reason behind the nose bleed
6. In case of drowning, it is so untrue to try to get water out of the lungs, as you can damage his lungs while doing so. What you have to do instead is just to fix his body, start recovery process, call ambulance directly as some late complications can appear on him
7. Perfumes and slapping someone who has fainted is so common, but the actual reasons behind the loss of conscious are various and only a doctor can diagnose it. The thing with perfumes is that the patient could be suffering from sensitivity against them and thus will cause suffocation only, as for the slapping part that is useless in helping the patient
8. The biggest fallacy with Poison is to induce vomiting, according to the American Academy of Paediatrics. The right thing is to get the victim to the ER together with the container of whatever poison was ingested. These days, ER doctors will often give the victim activated charcoal to bind the poison in the stomach and keep it from entering the bloodstream.
9. Seizures and the worst error is to put something in the victim’s mouth or to try to restrain the patient. The recommendation here is to put the victim onto his or her side, and call ambulance. After the end of the seizure if anything got stuck in his mouth it could be removed but gentle.
10. Knocked-out tooth. A common mistake is to scrub the tooth. According to the American Dental Association, the best thing is to pick up the tooth by its chewing edge and drop it in a glass of milk. Then head to the dentist or the ER, where it might be reimplanted. The faster you act, the better your chances.