15 Jun The IVAN Research Institute in partnership with ANPA
The IVAN Research Institute in partnership with the Association of Nigeria Physicians in America, ANPA, have trained 24 Nigerian doctors and nurses on the steps and dynamics in offering basic life support, particularly in emergencies to persons with cardiovascular ailments.
The doctors and nurses who were drawn from ten states in Nigeria spread across 12 sites in the six geopolitical zones of the country were skilled in a four day intensive training in Enugu with practical demonstrations on how to resuscitate lives of persons who develop cardiac arrests or heart attacks in emergency situations.
Both partners said that cardiovascular diseases have become commonplace in the world hence the need to sharpen the skills of Nigeria healthcare workers, and indeed the general public, on the trends of practical steps in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, CPR, as responses in emergency situations so as to save lives.
The health workers were practically trained on different methods of how to swiftly place a patient on a flat surface and use their hands on a patient’s chest to pump air into the heart or use Artificial Manual Breathing Unit, AMBU bag; or the Advanced Electrical Device, AED, to resuscitate a patient who just suffered heart attack or cardiac arrests.
“Once you see a collapsed patient, probably shouting for help, you rush to him or her and ensure that the patient is placed on a flat surface before you begin to push or pump the chest. While pumping the power comes from the shoulder and not from the whole body. First you ask the patient ‘are you okay,’ make sure you don’t get tired of pumping otherwise you may lose the patient. Every second you do the right thing saves life,” instructed one of the trainers, Angela Brown.
Compression and positioning of pocket masks on a patient’s nose, particularly in cases of pediatrics, were exhaustively demonstrated while urging the health workers to always be thorough and pay close attention to information from patients so that they could have proper and adequate diagnosis.
On the infant CPR, the Nigerian America-based trainers demonstrated the process as almost the same with adults but with a few differences such as use of two fingers for pressing of the baby while the infants use smaller pocket masks and smaller AMBU bags. Special attention was drawn to the trainees that CPR is only applied on patients when they are on low pulse and low breathing.
The Associate Director for the Center for Strategic Integration (CSI) of IVAN Research Institute, Dr. John Olawepo, said that the training which was a collaboration between his institute and ANPA was because “we think that because of the high mortality and mobility of cardiovascular events, that this is an opportunity for us to train our doctors and nurses across the country. Present here are a doctor and a nurse from 12 sites across the country. There are two sites in each of the geopolitical zones in ten states of Nigeria. They are 24 in number receiving the training for basic life support.
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