Fandom High School

Today class was in the Danger Shop, though McCoy was using it mostly for the adequate floor space. The floor was peppered with CPR practice manikins, each separated by a few feet. He waited until his students filed in, and then began.

"You all probably could have predicted we'd do CPR, even if it hadn't been in the course description. You'll have to forgive a man a little predictability." Wouldn't it be nice if the world were just a bit more predictable in general?

McCoy continued, "CPR stands for cardiopulmonary resuscitation. It's to be used to slow tissue death in the brain by providing a bit of air and circulation when breathing has stopped or is coming in few gasps. As with most things in this course, it is human-centric. Some aliens aren't going to have a comparable process. Some are hardy enough that you can shove their hand in their chest and massage the heart manually. Not recommended." Not that he'd done it himself, but he'd certainly seen it done. Bit alarming, even for a surgeon.

"CPR is sort of a last resort--without it, the patient won't have oxygen getting to the brain and will without a doubt die. CPR isn't incredibly effective, but in a few cases it can allow the body time to snap back. It can also keep someone's brain from dying for a bit until advanced medical help can get there. The latter is the better case, but this is Emergency Medical Situations. You're not always going to have that chance to get to a defibrillator or a respirator or any medical equipment. You may be their only hope to restore circulation."

McCoy got down himself next to a manikin. "I'm going to do a slow demonstration of the process and talk you through it. Pay close attention, because you're going to team up with a partner and assess one another. Each of you will take a turn with the manikin and the other will watch and critique." He did the demonstration talking them through each step slowly. And there were a lot of steps. And a lot of potential disasters.

"Anyone who isn't able to do the resuscitation on their own for whatever reason, your job is no less important." He didn't look at Jeff, but he also didn't not look at Jeff. "You still need to know this. Assume your partner's an untrained bystander, and walk them through the process as your proxy deliberately, carefully, and calmly. Just because you can't get in there and do it yourself doesn't mean you might not save a life. We'll be revisiting CPR later, so don't worry if you're not perfect now. Make sure you work out the kinks with a fake person, first, before you have to use it for real. Any questions at all, you feel free to ask for a demo again. And Mercy's volunteered to be the TA, thanks Mercy if she's here, so that position's been filled."

[There's more detailed videos here at this link if you want more info, but I didn't want to "assign" too much to watch!]