Nellie The Elephant
January 22nd, 2007
There are many different ways that people learn CPR. I was 21 before I learnt CPR properly - before I joined the ambulance service I might add - and I was just taught to do compressions at a rate of 100 per minute; “you know, faster than one a second, but not quite two“.
This is surprisingly unhelpful, but I tried to do the chest compressions at what I thought was about 100 per minute as best I could. At a subsequent course I did a few months later, I found myself doing 2 person CPR with a friend on a
dummy. It was after a couple of cycles of CPR that it dawned on me that Gareth was muttering the words to ‘Nellie The Elephant‘ whilst compressing the chest. I asked him about it and he said that he was taught to use the children’s song as it had exactly 15 beats after which two mouth-to-mouth ventilations were needed.
A few days ago, I went to a woman who had been having a conversation with her husband when she left the room to get something from the kitchen. She called for an ambulance when she returned to the room and he wouldn’t answer her questions. As me and my crewmate were resuscitating him, all I could think was “Nellie the Elephant packed her trunk and said goodbye to the circus…”
Old habits die hard.
Apologies for the lack of updates lately. Everything will be back to normal again soon!
8 Comments
1. carmelo | January 23rd, 2007 at 8:47 am
Don’t worry, still getting taught to do it with that rhythm in training school..
2. Dan | January 23rd, 2007 at 9:32 am
That highlights some training inconsistencies. I went through the same training programme as you did and I was taught about the adventures of our Nellie….
3. iain macbain | January 23rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
New one for me but I can see how it would work. Just have to remember to keep my voice down. I dont have a good singing voice.
4. Ian | January 23rd, 2007 at 6:10 pm
………just remember not to get faster as you do in the song!
5. SarahJT | January 23rd, 2007 at 10:43 pm
The theme tune of the Archers works perfectly too!
6. ecparamedic | January 24th, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Ever tried ‘Staying Alive’?
7. iain macbain | January 27th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
Been trying to figure out if it works with the new protocol, recon you have to include the trumpety, trump bit. Not the most musical person so not convinced.
8. Mama Mia | January 28th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Awesome! Thank you - I have struggled for years to keep count while doing CPR - this will really help, and it works beautifully with the new guidelines - just sing it twice! Now the others in resusc will have yet another reason to laugh at me, but I’ll be doing perfectly timed compressions!