Response
A really quick way of making sure a patient has oxygen in their brain, is to see how responsive they are. Someone might look as though they’re about to die, but really, they’re just sleeping! We need to try and wake them up- to see if they’re responsive or not.
If someone is responsive (their eyes are moving, they’re talking etc.) they must be getting oxygen to their brain. To see if they are responsive, we tap their shoulders and shout at them. If they are responsive, you can put them into the recovery position (we’ll talk about that later), but they might not let you. If they’re not responsive, we need to go on to see where the problem is.
A simple scale you can use to measure responsiveness is the AVPU scale. It stands for:
Alert = that's what you and me are at the moment
Alert to Voice = they wake up when you speak to them
Alert to Pain = they wake up if you cause them some pain
Unresponsive = what ever you do, you can't wake them up
We should shout for help because if the person is not waking up this means that they are quite poorly so you need to get adults and other people to help as soon as possible. You would not leave the person to go and get help until you had checked a few other things. One of the things they ask you when you call an ambulance is whether the patient is breathing or not - so we need to check.