I call the CIRM (A manual of first aid and medical assistance for sailors) - Stefano Camerucci [2005, PDF]

I call the CIRM

Year: 2005
Language: english
Author: Stefano Camerucci
Genre: Manual
Publisher: International Radio Medical Centre
Format: PDF
Quality: eBook
Number of pages: 216
Description: “I call the CIRM” is a text written for the ship’s executive officer and for all the sailors.
The aim of the book is to provide a guide which can make the help and medical assistance of a person who gets sick or injured while sailing and far away from a harbour, much easier.
It is not a medical book at all, in fact technical words have been avoided. You will not find, in the index, the names of the diseases; there are no paragraphs about appendicitis , pneumonia , arm fracture and so on, but instead there is a list of the most common symptoms, such as fever , cough , or abdominal pain and a list of the most common types of injuries, such as traumatisms or intoxications . The experience of the CIRM teaches us that, onboard of a ship where there is no doctor, the best thing to do is examining carefully the starting symptoms of a disease or observing what type of accident has occurred, considering all the possibilities and intervening with caution so that the sick or injured person arrives to the harbour of destination in the best possible conditions.
The manual has been divided in short files, where you can find the description of the symptoms and the signs of the diseases or injuries that are more likely to happen onboard of a ship. All the have been compiled following a prefixed scheme, similar in all the chapters.
This choice was made so that the manual could be easily consulted; in this way the reader will always find the same methodology of intervention, whatever chapter he may be interested into. This will lead to a few repetitions, but the reader will excuse us.
In the first part of each file, there will be a few questions to clarify how the disease began, or the type of accident occurred, what us doctors call anamnesis , or case history.
Afterwards, there is a description of how the patient should be examined and to which symptoms you should pay special attention in order to clarify the patient s conditions and how serious the problem is. Then there are some instructions on what the first intervention should consist of, the most essential ones to insure first-aid, while waiting to contact a radio-medical centre. Finally, there is a memorandum that allows you to gather the most important information that you ll need to communicate to the medical centre. Just a short consideration: limiting to the most essential the therapeutic instructions, is a precise choice of the authors. Onboard of a ship, a rescuer must act independently only in the beginning of the problem, then he must be guided by an expert doctor. If the rescuer continued to
take care of the patient without consulting a doctor, first of all he could put his life in danger, secondly he could face medico-legal problems and be asked to pay a compensation for damages. The request for radio-medical assistance is for the safety of both the rescuer and
the patient.
In the second part of the manual, there is a chapter about the main rules of prevention and prophylaxis of some diseases, and another chapter which contains instructions on how to correctly carry out some therapeutic and diagnostic duties, such as measuring someone s
blood pressure, giving someone an injection or doing the cardiac-respiratory resuscitation.
In this chapter you will find many drawings that will help you to understand the descriptions. Finally, there are two appendixes: the onboard pharmacy, according to the indications of the OMS-IMO, and a glossary which explains the technical words used.

Topic has been moved from forum Others (not maritime) to forum Medicine
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