When taking CPR classes, the recovery position should always be included. If placed in the recovery position, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Bonham, Keith Moon, Bon Scott, and many other of my rock and roll heroes could have lived on, as well as countless others. If only these people’s friends and bystanders been informed of the importance and seriousness of this technique and situation, perhaps they would have lived a longer life.
Over the past 10 years of teaching CPR classes, I have asked my students while teaching, “Has any one here lost a friend in college or high school from choking on their vomit after heavy drinking?” A student in least 1 out of every 5 CPR classes I have taught has raised their hand. Everyone should know when and how to place someone in the recovery position. We should make sure that our children know this as they are heading up “fool’s hill” as I call it. They will most likely be in a situation at some point where someone has had way too much and is unconscious. 88,000 deaths per year have occurred from
Any time someone is unconscious, we emphasize in CPR classes, we call 911 and check for breathing. If the patient is breathing, we put them on their side, officially called the recovery position. If they aren’t breathing, we start CPR. While it’s easy to look at this as putting the patient on their side, they patient is actually tilting 45 degrees toward the ground. Their head is tilted down so if they vomit, everything comes out. Also – because their head is tilted down, gravity pulls their jaw, and attached tongue, forward, keeping their tongue off the back of their throat.
The following are steps to place a patient into the recovery position:
- With patient on back, place arm closest to you over their head.
- Lift opposite knee and elbow to raise center of gravity.
- With one hand on patient’s shoulder and one n their knee, roll them like a log, toward you so their knee and elbow are on the floor, and their head is tilting downward.
I know above that I focused on cited instances where patients were unconscious from alcohol and other drugs. While CPR Classes often do teach putting patients in this position, they always fail to included the way too common reason for unconsciousness, which is alcohol and other drug use.
While most people have no problem calling 911 for a seizure, it is seldom 911 is called when someone is passed out, or unconscious from overconsumption of alcohol. Rarely does anyone die from a seizure. Countless people die from overconsumption of alcohol, leading to unconsciousness.
Somehow we have, as a society, accepted a fallacy that passing out from drinking too much is ok, and that the person just needs to “sleep it off”. It is important to teach our kids that drinking underage isn’t ok. And it’s also important that they know that over drinking even when legal isn’t ok. It is crucial to teach our kids and teenagers early that, when someone is passed out drunk, it is life threatening. Unconsciousness is a reason to call 911 and put the person in the recovery position until help arrives, for any reason. Currently, most teenagers carry cell phones. If peer pressure is an inhibitor to calling 911, they can anonymously call 911, no one needs to know. They can be taught to put unconscious patients in the recovery position. The last thing we want is for our children, our teenagers, to be raising their hands 20 years from now in their CPR classes, indicating they had a friend die from something as preventable as this.