CPR For Suspected Drowning

In our new online sea kayaking course, first aid for kayakers, highly experienced first aid trainer Steve Bowens takes us through Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation or CPR. Without a shadow of doubt CPR has the potential to be a life saving skill. We highly recommend that all paddlers take a basic first aid course and take the opportunity to practice CPR on a resuscitation mannequin.

We hope it never happens, but giving quality CPR to someone who isn’t breathing will dramatically increase their chance of survival. CPR is a combination of chest compressions and breaths into the casualties mouth. This helps maintain blood pressure and keeps oxygen going to the brain.

When we do our primary survey of a casualty there are 3 possible outcomes, they are conscious and breathing, unconscious and breathing or unconscious and not breathing. If the later is the scenario (unconscious and not breathing) then we will need to do CPR. It is vital to remember that in this scenario we are going to need outside assistance from a medical professional so it's paramount that we send someone to get help, alert the emergency services and get someone to find a defibrillator nearby. 

As a paddlers or people who operate around water it is possible that the mechanism for them becoming unconscious and not breathing is a drowning incident. Maybe we have recovered them from the water or the surf. In this situation the first thing we need to do is give our casualty 5 rescue breaths, this will help reinflate the lungs and get oxygen into the blood. We can then move onto our chest compressions. 30 chest compressions, our hands interlocked, our shoulders above the casualties chest and with straight arms pushing firmly down on the sternum to a depth of around 6-8cm. We will do 30 fairly fast compressions.

After the 30 compressions we give 2 mouth to mouth breaths. We continue the cycle of 30 chest compressions to 2 mouth breaths unless the casualty shows signs of life, a medical professional tells us to stop or we become exhausted and we simply cannot continue.

In a drowning incident it’s possible that our casualty might vomit during the process of giving CPR, this is a good sign. If this happens we need to carefully roll their head to the side to allow any vomit to escape and clear the airway. We can then do our primary survey again. If they aren’t breathing we continue CPR, if they are breathing we can put them in the recovery position.

Our first aid for kayakers course goes into many of the areas above in more detail including giving CPR, primary surveys, recovery position, moving casualties and much more. It is important to remember that this article nor the accompanying video is a replacement for quality first aid training and CPR practice.