First Aid Does Not Imply Medical Treatment

Unexpected incidents doesn't choose any time or any place to happen and regardless of how careful people think they are, they can still be caught in an accident. People can get in to a medical emergency by just doing their regular daily activities or as a result of a seemingly harmless action that they did and when they do, we cannot always wait for professional medical help to arrive cause each time that they are left unattended might result in worsening the condition of the victim that may also incur lifetime of side effects and at worst, can result in the failure to preserve life. Because of this, providing immediate help through first aid to the victim can increase their survival rate and thus, a necessary skill to learn. However, first aid does not imply medical treatment and is by no means a replacement for it and that was the belief I hold as a person with some training in first aid application.

Medical processionals have spend many years studying just so that they can be capable to treat people, pass the exam to get their medical license and spend more years again if they want to specialize on a specific medical field and yet despite all of that, they still do not have a 100% guarantee that a person would live. On the other hand, the knowledge of regular people when it comes to applying first aid may have come from their family or as a part of tradition which can also sometimes include some superstition so not only they are not capable of treating serious medical health condition, their actions may also result in worsening their condition. And given that we do not have the experience that medical practitioners have, even just applying the right first aid for people might prove to be hard as we are not used on such situations and that people could also be emotional while tending to the victim specially if its their family, resulting for them to make mistakes.

For example, applying first aid on minor injuries, such as tending for minor wounds and surface level burns can be sufficient enough. Just cleaning them with soap or alcohol then placing bandages on the injured area to control the bleeding and prevent infection was enough of a treatment for them. But when it comes to more serious injuries such as dislocation or fractures, we cannot expect such simple treatment to work as not only they could take weeks if not months of treatment, they could also sometimes required for the victim to undergo an operation with the hands of medical experts. At most, what first aid people can provide is to apply braces on the injured part so the victim would not aggravate the injury before they were sent to the hospital.