This afternoon, P4-7 welcomed a very special visitor into our classroom; Lydia Downie, the ambulance technician. We were all very excited when she drove into the playground in her ambulance!🚑
As part of our ‘body systems’ science topic, Lydia had very kindly offered to come in for a CPR workshop. With her, she brought the armless, legless Frank, the CPR dummy. Lydia started off by explaining how she responds to an emergency using the DR ABC technique. This involved firstly checking for ‘Danger,’ secondly checking for a ‘Response’. Afterwards, it was time for action, she showed us how to check a patients ‘Airways’ and the patients ‘Breathing’ and pulse by touching their neck. If the patients breathing, that’s when we would look at ‘circulation’ and the heart.❤️
Lydia showed us how to give Frank some beats with our hands to support his heart. We learned that the song ‘Staying Alive’ helps us with the rhythm of our beats. 🎶
Afterwards, she impressed us by showing us the AED, or the ‘defibrillator’ which would be used to shock the heart and help it to get back to its usual rhythm and where to place the shock pads on a patients body.
Then, of course, it wouldn’t be a visit from the emergency service without a trip into their vehicle- always a super crowd pleaser 🙂. We ventured out into the sunshine to have a look inside Lydia’s ambulance. We really enjoyed playing patient and paramedic and sitting inside the driver’s seat. Lydia showed us where the medicine is stored in the ambulance and what medication would be required when in different emergencies. We were challenged to put a bandage on our friend the quickest – we had lots of fun! And, I’m sure everyone’s had fun with these at home too.
We thought it would be nice if the P1-3’s could take a wee peek inside the ambulance too, which ties in nicely with their topic ‘medicine’.😷
A HUGE big thank you to Lydia for giving up her time this afternoon to visit us at Leswalt! We learned so much about the heart and the circulatory and raspatory body systems. Aria commented that ‘this afternoon has been so cool’ which we all agreed with too!😍
