Alright, so let's take a look at the bag valve mask a bit closer.
Professional rescuers are encouraged to use the bag valve mask whenever possible
but one important aspect of this is that it takes practice.
It's not that it's rocket science at all,
but it just takes practice to be able to get your fingers placed correctly
and to get your own technique down with some of the hints I'm going to show you
to be able to seal the mask to the face of the patient.
Another mistake that's commonly made is we think
we're going to crush the mask down onto the face of the patient.
When in reality, we're sealing it,
but bringing the face of the patient up into the mask.
Not mask down on patient's face.
Face up into mask.
That combined with sealing with the C-E method
allows us usually to get a pretty good seal.
Some of the reasons you might not get a good seal
is deformity to the face, traumatic injury to the face, or a lot of facial hair.
If that happens, you're going to do the best you can,
but it's probably going to be an intubation patient at that point
to be able to control the airway.
But for this case, we're talking about basic life support with a bag valve mask.
Notice, I've taken the reservoir bag off.
There is no oxygen hooked up to this bag.
If there were oxygen hooked up to this,
we would be at high flow oxygen delivery with bag expanded.
The way you do that is cover the outlet while it's on high flow,
the bag would expand and fill with air,
and you're ready to start ventilating to capture
as much of that percentage of oxygen as possible.
But we're just going to do room air, which is perfectly acceptable as well.
In fact, some statistics and studies are showing that
it might be just great to do it with room air.
Remember, too, the bag valve mask is helping this person
who might possibly be in cardiac arrest
because we're not giving them any percentage of our carbon dioxide
thereby contributing to their hypercarbia
and the CO2 buildup in their body.
So there is a benefit of that.
The other benefit is we're not putting our face anywhere near the person's face.
Therefore, protecting ourselves from infection as well.
So, when we put this on the patient's face,
we're going to make sure that the narrow, pear-shape of this mask
is going on the bridge of the nose.
Then, the wider or broader part of the mask
is going to cover below the lips and above the chin.
Then, coming in at the stem with our fingers,
our C, our thumb and first finger,
we're sealing in this case the left side of the mask
while the E, or the middle, ring, and pinky fingers,
grab the mandible, or the jaw of the patient,
and again, this is after we have gone ahead and
put the person's head in a good head-tilt, chin-lift position
and we're drawing the face up into the mask.
Now slowly, over a second, we're delivering a good rescue breath.
Letting them exhale.
Delivering another slow rescue breath.
Looking for chest rise and fall.
It's very easy to lose track of how fast you're ventilating
the patient when you're using a bag valve mask.
And there has been some statistics showing that we're actually
hyperventilating patients that do not need to be hyperventilated.
Remember, it's one breath over a second delivery is ideal.
And for people that just need rescue breathing,
we're trying to breathe for them about the average that
a real, living, human being would need to be breathed for.
One breath every 5 to 6 seconds and about 12 a minute.
So we're not hyperventilating the patient
unless the protocol is calling for hyperventilation
then follow that protocol.
So, I hope this was helpful for the bag valve mask.
Practice makes perfect. Keep that in mind.
And the more you can practice, the better.