WHEN IT COMES to first aid, there's often a big difference between how we think we'd cope in an emergency and our actual abilities. An NOP survey of workers, commissioned in July of this year by Trust Medical, a provider of first aid solutions for the workplace, highlighted that 55 percent of workers claimed they would know how to revive someone who had suffered a cardiac arrest. "The aim of the survey was to gain an understanding of employees' first aid skills and the findings were surprising," explains Mark Porter, the GP, writer and broadcaster. Dr Porter is currently supporting a Trust Medical campaign to train employees to operate automated external defibrillators in the workplace. "First aid involves both knowledge and confidence -- it's not only important to know what to do in an emergency, but vital to be able calmly to put that knowledge into practice when it counts," he continues. "We had anticipated that no more than 10-20 percent of respondents would know how to accurately and safely revive someone in cardiac arrest. In fact, more than half of those questioned said they felt they knew what to do and how to do it. This is something I find hard to believe. "Hopefully none of those questioned will ever be put to the test because I doubt very much whether most of them would be able to cope as easily as they think."
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