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Karen,
If I understand you correctly:
if I am not qualified as a rescue diver, I should just leave the victim alone
and watch him or her die? Because otherwise if she or he dies, I might be sued
because I tried to save a life and failed doing so?
Is it not better to have tried and failed then to not even try?
confused,
Adri Haine
Hi -
The thread on using your reg's manual purge as a inspirator has many
ramfications. There are medical and legal. I think someone else covered the
medical issues fairly well:
* danger of causing vomit forced inspiration
* danger of mediastinal blahdidah if they have a punctured lung
and one else:
* Contrary to what one other poster said, there is a *BIG* difference
between your purge
valve and the force inspiration bags that medics use. The bags are
designed to carefully
only give about a liter or so of oxygen -- ie, the approximate tidal
volume of an adult lung
and no more. There's so much danger of overinflating someone that the
only safe methods
are your own recycled air (you, by definition, can't breathe more than
your tidal volume into
a non-breathing victim) or the bag.
Given that any boat worth your $70 should have a DAN O2 unit, then please
use the face mask with O2 inlet using your own breaths to inspire the
victim. You will only get about 40% O2 into the victim, but it's better than
killing them with a purge reg.
DAN used to sell O2 units with purge regs; now you'll notice they have the
purge valves covered. Phone DAN up and ask them why.
If an O2 reg is all you got, I would advise:
* _YOU_ (the CPR giver) take breaths in from the O2 reg and administer
CPR using those
breaths. You'll give about 96% O2 to the victim with no risk of
overinflating
-------
Legal issues
This was covered in my rescue and O2 courses and Wilderness First Responder
Courses. The "Good Samaritan" laws in most states will protect you if:
* You are a non-professional (not a DM, instructor; medic, doctor)
* You are operating within the scope of what you have been taught and
standard protocol
So if you have taken a rescue course, you can only use the techniques that
you learned in the rescue course. If you start using a demand purge reg to
inflate the victim or go around punching holes in their chests using Bic
(TM) pens, then you are outside the scope of your training and open to legal
issues.
Karen Nakamura
SSI Rescue Diver
SOLO WFR
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