First Aid Training - PNG Style

First Aid – PNG Style

“As soon as you hear the music, you may begin mixing around!” I announce as my grade sixers find their spots in the room.  Andrew, the deputy principal, meanders into my classroom as the music comes to a halt and the kids get their hands up, pair up, and begin to share seamlessly.  (I include this bit for all of my teacher buddies who know the joy of a cooperative learning activity working as well as freshly oiled machine as a member of administration walks into your room!) 

Andrew has come to inquire about my [lack of] First Aid training.  A class is scheduled for Sunday and Monday and have been the “lucky” one to selected for training as I’ll be taking 40 kids on a three hour flight to Rabaul at the beginning of Term 3 to hike around a volcano, snorkel in the caves where the Japanese bunkered their submarines during World War II, and do a walkabout in a local village after learning how to cook using the hot springs.  My first reaction – oh no big deal, I did this in college.  Ha!  Why I still seem to forget that there is a PNG-spin on everything done in this country, I do not know. 

Andrew informs me that the class starts at the Early Learning Center campus over at Ela Beach at 8:00 a.m.  While out to dinner on Saturday night, Rob, the gentleman running the training, texts a teacher from another school inviting him to the class that starts at 9:00 a.m.  Rob doesn’t bother to inform Andrew or anyone at TEMIS.  We can’t reach Wape (it’s short a and the e is pronounced like the one in café) who arrives early at 7:45 on Sunday – he is the only PNG national in the entire country to arrive to anything early, I kid you not.  Knowing things here always run on “PNG Time” I arrive about five minutes after 9:00 expecting to be early…oh boy was I!  We waited around until 10:30 to begin the training – a few more stragglers arrived at lunch time.  No worries though, even with the late start we took a break for Morning Tea at 11:00, lunch was just pushed back until 1:00. 

I didn’t think too much about the training before hand, just assumed it would be very similar to what I’d done in college in the States – I mean, first aid is first aid no matter where you are in the world, right?!  WRONG!

The first step in handling a first aid necessary situation back home would be to shout for someone to call 911.  Shout all day long here in Moresby for an ambulance, as loudly as you want – you’re wasting your breath.  Oh, no, they have ambulances – they were donated by AussAide.  They are likely filled with important supplies like rice or vegetables or out of the city all together taking their wontoks out for a picnic or the like (wontoks are family who are seemingly barely or not at all related…for example, any American I meet in PNG would be considered a Wontok of mine).  Here in PNG, if a hospital visit is needed, someone better have a vehicle handy and some muscle to put behind getting an injured, scared person into it!

What is the biggest rule taught to First Aiders in the United States?  DO NOT MOVE AN INJURED PERSON!  You wait until trained emergency medical personnel arrive at the scene and let them take over.  You check for signs of danger, response, breathing, blood, and a heartbeat in critical situations, but you never move an injured person.  Well, if you did this here in PNG, even in the capitol city of Port Moresby, you’d be waiting for days.  PNG First Aid 101 – always be prepared to load an injured person into a vehicle to get them to a hospital.  We actually practiced doing this during our training!

When it comes to bandaging a scrape, cut, or wound First Aiders in the United States have the importance of a clean, sterile cloth or bandage impressed upon them.  If you only used clean, unused bandages here in PNG, the injured person would surely bleed out.  In the school we have sterile bandages in our First Aid Kits, but out in a village…our idea of clean doesn’t exist.  Here in PNG, grab a shirt, a sheet, whatever is available and start bandaging.

In the United States there have been law suits brought on First Aiders who have attempted to help a person and have been unsuccessful.  These are generally thrown out and the basic rule is if you are trained in first aid and there is an injured person – man, woman, or child – help.  Here in PNG if a woman is injured and the first aider is a man, it is best to ask a family member or another woman to assist you by following your instructions.  If at all possible in any situation, really, it is best to ask a family member to assist in providing care.  Here in PNG, if a person were not to survive an injury even with the first aider doing everything they are supposed to it is highly likely that the victim’s family would seek what is called compensation – retaliation.  This is usually sought out in violence – generally a stabbing or shooting or something equally life threatening.  Even though help was offered, the first aider took part in the death of their family member which is unacceptable.  I sincerely hope my newly refreshed First Aid skills are only needed in a controlled, school related situation – if at all!

Back home if a bone was broken, an ambulance would be called immediately or the child would be transported to the doctors if he or she was able to move.  Here in PNG, as you now know, an ambulance won’t arrive and getting to a hospital is sometimes hours or days away.  Although it is apparently out of a trained First Aiders duty of care (and in many places apparently illegal) to restrain someone or reset a broken bone, we were taught how to make slings and do a basic reset of a clean break – just in case.  ONLY HERE IN PNG!

The most interesting part of First Aid Training for me were the explanations of how to treat injuries like snake bites, allergic reactions, or wounds from the PNG nationals.  They all began with “Well, back in the village when that happens, we…” and usually involve some sort of herb or food to be eaten.  Cold water is also a regularly used “medicine”.  Other topics discussed during First Aid Training included expats being covered by insurance to be med-evaced out, but PNG nationals are not covered generally even when working for an expat company (one of the many inequities and types of exploitation I’ve encountered in PNG), which native snakes are deadly, that in PNG hospitals one must pay before being treated even when bleeding out, wild plants that are generally edible, and the many different ways to kill a pig based on which region or province a person was doing so in.  Like I said…First Aid – PNG Style.