What is the difference between poisoning and accidental first aid

The core difference is that the first aid priority logic between the two is completely different. Poison first aid always focuses on "blocking the absorption of poisons and promoting the metabolic excretion of poisons", while the core of ordinary accidental first aid is "prioritize the treatment of immediate fatal injuries and avoid secondary injuries."

In the seven years I have been working in pre-hospital emergency care, I have encountered too many police officers of the two types who came out at the same time, and the contrast is particularly obvious. We took two orders in a row during the rush hour last Wednesday night. The first one was a young man who went to a rental house after eating toxic wild mushrooms purchased online. When he arrived, he could still sit and talk, but he was a little weak after vomiting twice. Our first reaction was not to conduct ECG monitoring first, but to hand over diluted activated carbon suspension. While inducing vomiting, we contacted the emergency department to reserve resources for gastric lavage and hemoperfusion. All we could think about was "Don't let more toxins enter the blood." The other person who turned around was a delivery boy who was hit by an online ride-hailing service at an intersection. Although the person who arrived at the scene was conscious, his legs were deformed and his head was still bleeding. We immediately pressed the bleeding point on the head and put on a cervical collar to avoid secondary damage to the cervical spine. The legs were fixed with splints. We first suppressed the risk of hemorrhagic shock and spinal cord injury that were about to kill us, and then dealt with other abrasions and contusions.

Some nurses who have just entered the field have also asked me, don’t they all say that the first step in all first aid is to take care of the airway, breathing, and circulation? In fact, this is true, but the priority weight of the two types of first aid is completely different: if the poisoned person is conscious and breathing steadily, it will not matter if you measure the blood oxygen two minutes later, but if you induce vomiting ten minutes later, the toxins may be absorbed twice as much, and the subsequent treatment will be several times more difficult; but if it is a person with an accidental trauma, if you do not suppress the bleeding wound first and check other things first, the person may be gone in a few minutes.

To use an inappropriate analogy, first aid for poisoning is like discovering that a rat has entered your home and is still burrowing into the house. Your first reaction is to block the door first and then drive out the rat that has entered. First aid for an accident is like having a cracked wall at home and you have to drop bricks. Your first reaction is to move the bricks away and hold the cracked area to prevent further injuries.

Of course, there are special situations, such as someone who falls into a coma after taking poison, and has both the risk of poison absorption and the problem of brain trauma and bleeding. In this case, both ends must be dealt with in parallel, but the core logic will still not be messed up, and there will never be a situation where we only deal with the trauma and forget to detoxify the gastrointestinal tract. After all, the underlying causes of the disease are different, and the general direction of first aid will definitely be far different.