Page 30 - OHS, June 2022

DEFIBRILLATOR & CPR
are further enhanced with all-new live-action videos including the latest scientifific advancements in lifesaving care.
ThThe approach allows for half of the class to now be spent on hands-on training as well as a highly active learning environment with greater opportunities for feedback among peers and instructors. Instructors are finding that this process ensures more personalized—and more effective—training and evaluation of learner skills and knowledge.
Notably, the pandemic has also highlighted the need for course content for scenarios when an ambulance is unlikely to arrive within the optimal four to eight minutes of the event. This information focuses on training employees to manage care for immediate, life-threatening events such as cardiac arrest, choking or severe bleeding. It’s a crucial necessity in an era where EMS services are stretched thin.
Long stressed the importance of learning how to respond in a group. “You are not responding to an emergency alone and if you are, help’s coming,” he said. “We need to learn how to integrate that into the response.”
Customizing Emergency Training
for Specific Workplace Needs
Employers can now also access “Skill Boosts,” options that can be customized to the workplace, such as training a first aid responder on the administration of Naloxone, the lifesaving drug that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose.
Mickey Sjoberg of Medcor in McHenry, Ill., said that her workplace training organization relies heavily on Red Cross blended learning in the age of Covid. “I would say that probably 70 percent, if not more, of the classes that we’re hosting are blended learning,” she said, adding that it is augmented by in- person skills practice of no more than a handful of people at a time to maintain social distance.
Sjoberg reinforced Long’s observation about the value of learning from one’s peers because people respond to emergencies in groups. “It’s designed that when you’re doing your scenario- based training, you have a team that you can confer and confirm with,” she said.
For employers that want to offffer employees an online option for the cognitive portion of First Aid/CPR/AED training, they are encouraged to use a blended learning approach featuring “adaptive learning,” a methodology that allows learners to take an online pre-assessment and then receive training customized to their educational needs. This helps both the employer and the trainee—saving them time on material they have already mastered.
Covid-19 has forced huge changes in traditional approaches to education. In the reimagining of training in the Covid era, these new methods meet employers and employees “where they are” with training that give immediate responders the confidence to take immediate action when minutes matter.
Dom Tolli is senior vice president for product management and platform development at the American Red Cross.
REFERENCES
1. https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA3317first- aid.pdf
2. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/2007-01-16- 0#:~:text=OSHA%20recommends%2C%20but%20does%20not,an%20 infirmary%2C%20clinic
3. https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA3317first- aid.pdf
4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00472395211047865 5. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/osh.nr0.htm
6. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm
7. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/injury/fastfacts.html
8. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/2019-06-19
9. https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/overdose- death-rates#:~:text=Opioid%2Dinvolved%20overdose%20deaths%20 rose,2020%20to%2068%2C630%20overdose%20deaths.
10. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/opioids/data. html#:~:text=Understanding%20the%20Opioid%20Crisis&text=5.8%25%20 %E2%80%93%20The%20Bureau%20of%20Labor,occupational%20 injury%20deaths%20that%20year.
STAND-ALONE “MINI COURSES” BOOST MODERN-DAY LIFESAVING SKILLS
Within the past year, a Medcor clinical onsite nurse responded to a workplace overdose, initiating Naloxone, starting CPR and using an AED. The person survived and Mickey Sjoberg, Medcor’s manager oftraining,reportsthatthisclient“isnowdoingadeepdiveinto what we can provide for them.”
Options under consideration to augment standard First Aid, CPR and AED training are specialized “mini-courses” that customize emergency training so that participants are prepared to respond in the moments that matter.
One of the mini-courses focuses on opioid overdose and the administration of Naloxone, the lifesaving drug that rapidly reverses an opioid overdose. The 45-minute training helps individuals recognize an opioid overdose and teaches them how to administer naloxone through a nasal spray or nasal atomizer.
Opioid overdose training is needed because the national problem has become so deadly. According to the National
Institute on Drug Abuse, opioid-related overdose deaths rose from 21,088 in 2010 to 47,600 in 2017. They remained steady in 2018 with a similar number of deaths. “This was followed by a significantincreasethrough2020to68,630overdosedeaths,”the government public health agency found.9
Meanwhile, the overdose problem has spilled into the workplace, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that overdose deaths at work from non-medical use of drugs or alcohol increased for the seventh year in a row in 2019.10
These mini-courses are taught as stand-alone modules to participants that are already Red Cross-certified, or they can be added to a First Aid/CPR/AED course. Other courses topics include: anaphylaxis and epinephrine auto-injector administration; asthma and quick-relief medication administration; life- threatening bleeding and tourniquet application; and head, neck, muscle, bone and joint injuries and splinting.
24 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2022 www.ohsonline.com