How You Can Train Kids To Be Prepared For Medical Emergencies

How You Can Train Kids To Be Prepared For Medical Emergencies

Medical emergencies are bound to happen, especially if you’re living with the elderly, have underlying health conditions, or have accidents at home, which you cannot prepare for.

Everyone at home must be ready when events like this happen, including the kids. Preparedness for medical emergencies significantly reduces death and lessens the severity of the impact of the illness. Catching the warning signs early on can mitigate the gravity of the situation.

Kids can help you a lot in this situation, and if they’re the only other people at home, their presence and preparedness will be valuable. Let’s have a look at how you can prepare youngsters for medical emergencies:

1. Teach them about Your Family Medical File

Every home should have a medical file on hand, and it should be kept in an area that everyone knows about. Each member’s medical history, hospitalization records, prescription list, and doctor’s contact information should be included in the file. Kids must be educated on what it is and where it is to assist first responders in the case of an emergency. They may not be able to answer questions, but they can at least supply crucial information to assist responders.

2. Educate Them About Warning Signs

Kids are visual learners. If they can see what the information is instead of simply hearing it, they will internalize it. On video-sharing platforms, you may readily find educational movies regarding medical warning signals. 

Suppose you have a family member with heart ailments, asthma, or epilepsy that can attack anytime. In that case, it’s essential that kids know about them, recognize the warning signs, and know what to do when confronted with them. 

For a family member who has a heart ailment, the survival rate for a heart attack is 90-97% when they’re hospitalized the soonest. Kids must recognize the symptoms of a heart attack, including agonal breathing, which I learned while I was reading this. Kids need to know about this to increase the chances of survival of their family members who might suffer from a heart attack at any time.

3. Prepare A First Aid Kit Together

A great teaching moment for kids is through a show and tell. Prepare a first aid kit together and teach them the contents and uses. A medical emergency like a slip, fall, cut, and burn requires immediate attention, too, it would be excellent if your kids were equipped with basic know-how to handle simple medical emergencies like this.

4. Keep Important Contact Numbers Handy

The first thing anybody would do when faced with an emergency is to ask for help. Kids can’t handle very stressful situations, and you wouldn’t want to subject them to such, so they should know who to call and ask for help from. Keep significant contact numbers handy and accessible. Maybe put it in the refrigerator door so kids could quickly memorize the numbers when they see them often.

But more importantly, teach smaller kids how to use the telephone, dial, and communicate through it. Cause what’s the use of knowing the numbers when they don’t know how to use the device.

Emergency contact numbers may include the emergency hotline that they should know at the top of their head, contact numbers of hospitals, nearby relatives, doctors, and friends.

5. Discuss What A Medical Device Is

Seniors and family members with severe health conditions may opt to wear a medical wristband to maintain their independence and help the people around them cope with their situation. Kids must be taught what it’s for and how to identify emergencies through it.

A medical wristband updates the medical status of the wearer. It can track the wearer’s body temperature and blood pressure, as well as transmit a distress signal to the right person with a single button click.

The wristband also contains relevant medical information about the patient. Kids need to know how to help their family members who have it and help to charge it when it runs out of battery.

6. Have A Hospital Overnight Bag Packed

If your frequent hospitals often and know that at any given time you might visit again, it’s better that you prepare a bag with essentials that you will need, and teach your kids what it is and where it should be, in that way you have one less thing to worry about.

Conclusion

Medical emergencies can happen at any time. Recognizing the signs and knowing what to do can greatly increase the chances of survival of anyone under distress. Never underestimate the capability of a child. Your child could help. Educate them, lay out the plan, determine what they could handle, who knows, they could be the ones to save a family member’s life.