Reasons why you should learn first aid

A first-aid course only takes a matter of hours to complete but supplies you with all of the knowledge you require to handle an emergency. 【小题1】. Actually, there are more benefits if you take crucial (关键的) first-aid practices.

【小题2】. Just imagine for a second that somebody was in a life-threatening condition and your quick actions saved their lives. What a great feeling to wake up to! Remembering that you have prolonged someone’s life and allowed them to spend many more happy years with their loved ones.

Having the ability to help family and friends in need. When a member of your family or a friend injures himself or herself, there’s nothing worse than feeling helpless. In your first-aid training, you can learn how to treat a variety of medical conditions and injuries. This means that when someone is in need, you will know exactly what to do. 【小题3】.

Earning the respect of your fellow colleagues. 【小题4】. They will most certainly be grateful for all of your help, because you have provided the correct treatment at an early stage and they can recover quickly. This will reduce the number of days they are absent.

Gaining new responsibilities. Your role as a first-aider is very important especially in high-risk working environments where employees are operating heavy machines or working at a great height. 【小题5】. More importantly, your skills will be highly valued to prevent potential accidents.

The cancer death rate in the U.S. fell by the most on record as advances in treatments for lung tumors (肿瘤) like video-assisted surgery helped prolong the lives of patients.

The death rate from cancer has been gradually declining for 26 years, thanks in large part to fewer people smoking cigarettes. But from 2016 to 2017, the most recent period available, it dropped by 2.2%, the most ever in a single year, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Cancer Society. That compares with an average 1.5% yearly decline over the decade. The drop translates to roughly 2.9 million fewer cancer deaths. For lung cancer specifically, the death rate declined 4.3% annually from 2013 to 2017.

"It is really lung cancer that is driving this," said Rebecca, scientific director of surveillance research at the American Cancer Society, and lead author on the new study. "We found increases in survival for lung cancer at every stage in diagnosis.” She attributed the lower deaths to improvements in treatments, including video-assisted surgery that enables more patients with early lung tumors to become eligible (合格的) for operations; more precise radiation treatment; and better scanning technology allowing doctors to better assess(评估)the stage of tumor, so the patient gets the best treatment right away. At later stages of illness, new drugs that aim at specific disease-causing genes are helping patients whose tumors have those genetic flaws(缺陷). Overall, lung cancer death rates have dropped by 51% for men since their peak in 1990, and by 26% for women since their peak in 2002.

The report, based on U.S. government data, isn't all good news. Prostate(前列腺)cancer death rates have leveled off recently after a period of decline. That may be because many doctors pulled back on using the controversial prostate-specific antigen(抗原)test, or PSA, which can spot the disease but can lead to over-treatment of men who may never have died from their tumors.

"Though it was definitely causing harm, it was also contributing to declines in death," Siegel said. What's needed now is better screening tests to detect only the prostate cancers that will go on to cause harm.

Population death rates are considered one of the most reliable ways of measuring progress in cancer treatment and prevention. By contrast, cancer survival rates can sometimes be influenced by improvements in diagnosing tiny, early-stage tumors that wouldn't necessarily be deadly.

As stay-at-home orders relieve and cities reopen for business, many doctors and hospital administrators are calling for a quick return of health care to pre-pandemic levels. For months now, routine care has been postponed. Elective procedures—big moneymakers—were stopped so that hospitals could transfer resources to treating Covid-19 patients. Routine clinic visits were canceled or replaced by online sessions. This has resulted in great financial losses for hospitals and clinics. Hospitals have been forced to reduce employees or cut pay.

Most patients, on the other hand, at least those with stable chronic(慢性的) conditions, seem to have done OK. In a recent survey, only one in ten respondents said their health or a family member’s health had worsened as a result of delayed care. Eighty-six percent said their health had stayed about the same.

Admittedly, postponing health care had terrible health consequences for some patients with non-Covid-19 illnesses. Still, a majority of patients seem to have done better than what most doctors expected. It will probably take years to understand why. However, perhaps Americans don’t require the volume(体积) of care that their doctors are used to providing.

It is well recognized that a substantial amount of health care in America is wasteful, accounting for hundreds of billions of dollars of the total health care budget. Wasteful care is driven by many forces: “defensive” medicine by doctors trying to avoid lawsuits; the high prices that American doctors and hospitals charge; a lack of consensus about which treatments are effective; and the widespread belief that newer, more expensive technology is always better.

In a survey a few years ago, two-thirds of doctors in the United States admitted that between 15 percent and 30 percent of health care is probably unnecessary. Studies suggest that up to 20 percent of surgeries in some specialties are unnecessary. If your surgery was postponed because of the pandemic, it is worth having a conversation with your doctor about whether it is still needed.

Many institutions are using this difficult time in our nation’s history to make changes. The health care system should do the same.