Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Free Basic First-Aid Lessons Available Online

By Karen Smyke

There are countless of websites out there that give medical advice, some good, some not so good. If you type in something like sore throat, you'll come up with thousands of hits. This can often be confusing, as most are simply advertisments. Some of the other sites, are written by doctors, for doctors and are hard to understand. They cite all kinds of statistics and clinical studies, and don't really talk about what to do in a real world setting. Even worse, there are many sites that simply regurgitate what other authoritative sites have written, often misinterpreting valuable information and instructions.

Recently, my son woke up stomach ache, and I had to take him to the emergency department for what was in my view, was a serious condition. After a five hour visit, we were told it was just the stomach flu, and that it would go away soon.

That made me wonder if there was a website that could help me decide in the wee hours of the morning, if I really had to go to the hospital. I needed a general reference for simple problems, that could help me make simple decisions and help me decide what was serious, and what I could handle at home. Nothing too involved, just some common sense tips. Here's what I found:

I stumbled across this neat free site called OnlineFirstAid.org that is written by emergency personnel in plain English. They call it "practical first aid for everyone", and they try to give you enough information to help you decide whether you need to go to the ER or not. Also they give you easy to follow, common sense steps for hands on first aid techniques. You can learn to take care of many ailments yourself, whenever possible, saving you time and money.

The authors claim to work in busy emergency departments, in real hospitals, so the information they provide is straightforward and concise. I guess they're used to explaining difficult things, to regular people. They cover everything from kidney stones to athlete's foot. They even have articles on setting dislocated fingers and basic field laceration repair, should you be far away from a real ER. - 15683

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