Safety First

This afternoon, I was informed that the teachers were having a seminar about using an AED. By the time I got to the fourth floor (where the seminar would be) I found out that we would also be learning techniques to deal with violence (or something like that...I never get the full story).

Several paramedics came with CPR dummies and training AEDs to demonstrate for us. During the demonstration I noticed that the paramedic neglected to do a sweep to clear the dummy's airway and did not check for a pulse. This disturbed me to say the least.

In case you don't know CPR, let me explain briefly. If a person isn't breathing, it's possible that something is in his throat preventing him from doing so. So you put your finger in the person's mouth to check for that. Otherwise, what's the point of breathing for him if your breath isn't going to go anywhere either? Also it's possible for your heart to be beating but for you to not to be breathing. If this is the case, you probably don't want someone to needlessly break your ribs. Hence checking to make sure a person's heart is actually not beating before doing the work for it.

When we split into groups to practice, I asked our instructor "um...excuse me, but shouldn't we check for a pulse before starting chest compressions?" (by asking him I mean that I asked an English teacher to translate). Apparently "these days" you no longer have to do these things. This made no logical sense to me at all so I pestered for an explanation. It seems I received two answers. It's difficult for the average (Japanese) person to check for a pulse, so the organization that oversees these kinds of things decided it would be better to teach people to just go ahead and start chest compressions. The second is that if a person isn't breathing but his heart is still beating then his heart will stop beating soon. So it's okay to just go ahead with the chest compressions. Um...I really hope nothing bad happens to me here that would prompt a random incompetent person to start doing CPR willy-nilly.

Then we watched a video, the topic of which I can best describe as "stranger danger." It was filmed using a bunch of elementary school kids and the acting is ridiculous. In the first scene, a dirty, unkempt guy comes into a classroom and pulls out a knife. The teacher screams, the students run. The man randomly cuts one of the students and continues waving the knife around. The second scene had a sweaty guy sneak up to a school playground and attack the children with a baseball bat.

After a few more scenes and some explanations of safety procedures, the video goes back to those scenes to show how teachers should handle the situation. In the first scene, the teacher fights of the knife-wielding character with a chair until she's joined by a couple other teachers who together subdue him with furniture. In the second scene, one student informs the teachers of the crazy guy with the bat. They run out to the playground and fight him off with a mop and a stick.

All this led up to some crazy instrument we apparently have at school. It looked to be a metal pole (like the kind at swimming pools for aiding distressed swimmers) modified to be pitch-forked on the end. You're supposed to use it to trap the menacing individual against a wall.

Of course, I might be missing something since I couldn't understand a word of the seminar.