Hypothermia Briefing

[Steam Flyer]

Two minutes is about 300 words, spoken quite fast and no allowance for questions. I haven’t put your text into a word counter but that looks a lot more than 300 words to me. Not sure the subject can be done in 2 minutes. The sailing first aid class run at my club spends around an hour on hypothermia.

Right, it's not a class. It's a brief feature. At the end of it, i want the audience to know 3 things about hypothermia, not be experts with what I would consider skipper-level knowledge & skill.

 

[dogwatch]

OK, it is 350 words. Less than my eyeball had been telling me.

 

[giegs]

Right, it's not a class. It's a brief feature. At the end of it, i want the audience to know 3 things about hypothermia, not be experts with what I would consider skipper-level knowledge & skill.

Hard not to go into teacher mode when the opportunity presents itself. Way more of a skill than brevity.

Maybe summon your inner auctioneer.

 

[seaker]

I would add call Coast Guard in addition to 911 depending on where it happened. You can say call 911 or Coast Guard as appropriate.

 

[LB 15]

In colder climates, when a crew member becomes slow to respond, inactive and detached, you guys suspect Hypothermia. Down here we suspect they are hungover or got caught banging the Commodores wife in the committee room.

All jokes aside I have been Hypodermic 3 times. Once when i rode my pushbike of the dock in the UK in Feburary. Once during the '98 hobart race and once when I was caught in a Blizzard in a chairlift in Japan. It is no joke, the strangest part is not really caring what is happening too you.

 

[floater]

what I learned in school: cotton kills. if your fingers are cold put on a hat.

also - ladies - zip up the damn jackets.

 

[floater]

and yes. I majored in skiing.

 

[Steam Flyer]

In colder climates, when a crew member becomes slow to respond, inactive and detached, you guys suspect Hypothermia. Down here we suspect they are hungover or got caught banging the Commodores wife in the committee room.

All jokes aside I have been Hypodermic 3 times. Once when i rode my pushbike of the dock in the UK in Feburary. Once during the '98 hobart race and once when I was caught in a Blizzard in a chairlift in Japan. It is no joke, the strangest part is not really caring what is happening too you.

The mental effects are serious, not a joke at all. I know of incidents where police thought a hypothermic person was drunk, and treated him very harshly... I had an experience with rescuing a trio of sailors off a capsized vessel and the owner/skipper was trying to communicate with me and could not speak nor remember the detail of the boat he was trying to tell me.

 

[Bored Stiff]

For a 2 minute stand up, you need to cut any detail and go straight to the takeaway points:
1. No one is immune to it. Macho man is just as vulnerable.
2. It doesn’t need to be bitterly cold to get it.
3. It presents as ’umbles.
4.It is a very serious condition and requires urgent treatment.
5. Do’s and don’ts of treatment.
6. Repeat no one is immune to it.

I think you have that all covered, so good to go.

 

[duncan (the other one)]

also - ladies - zip up the damn jackets.

shut your mouth.

 

[dacapo]

The "medical minute" is a regular feature at our meetings. At least passing mention of basic science is encouraged; going more than 2 minutes is not.

3 minutes and a giant claw descends from the ceiling and the time-wasting speaker is catapulted into the gaping jaws of a nearby tyrannosaurus.

Oddly enough, for good topics (which I don't think this will be) the audience (members) ask questions and relate anecdotes for a long time afterward.

The goal is to have club meetings be interesting interesting and informative, not a long series of interminable reports from the committee on cats followed by an even longer one from the committee on dogs. But as always, YMMV and people always want to invest lots of time in the subject THEY are interested in. I got asked to do this because one of the junior sailors was explaining hypothermia and heat stress to a less-well-informed adult, when asked how she knew all this she said "Well Coach Steam taught us all about it..."

great stuff. Im doing an OTW Safety Seminar for my YC this weekend. Hypothermia is one of the topics. (and yes it could be talked about for a much longer period )

 

[Steam Flyer]

great stuff. Im doing an OTW Safety Seminar for my YC this weekend. Hypothermia is one of the topics. (and yes it could be talked about for a much longer period )

The problem is, people only remember a few things from a single class or lesson. It takes 3 or 4 to get to the point where they are familiar enough with the first dozen things, and the basic outline, that you can dig into details. That's why I want to cut it to the 3 (or more realistically, 5) things that I want them to all know, absolutely. And one of them is, "you need to learn more about it."

For a 2 minute stand up, you need to cut any detail and go straight to the takeaway points:
1. No one is immune to it. Macho man is just as vulnerable.
2. It doesn’t need to be bitterly cold to get it.
3. It presents as ’umbles.
4.It is a very serious condition and requires urgent treatment.
5. Do’s and don’ts of treatment.
6. Repeat no one is immune to it.

I think you have that all covered, so good to go.

Excellent, big help, thanks!

 

[spankoka]

For a 2 minute stand up, you need to cut any detail and go straight to the takeaway points:
1. No one is immune to it. Macho man is just as vulnerable.
2. It doesn’t need to be bitterly cold to get it.
3. It presents as ’umbles.
4.It is a very serious condition and requires urgent treatment.
5. Do’s and don’ts of treatment.
6. Repeat no one is immune to it.

I think you have that all covered, so good to go.

Yes; in the first Gulf War a SAS soldier died of hypothermia while swimming away from the enemy. His family had a tough time with that because they could not accept that he died that way-him being a tough guy. If he was shot or blown up-that could presumably be understand.

 

[dogwatch]

Yes; in the first Gulf War a SAS soldier died of hypothermia while swimming away from the enemy.

That sounds more like cold water shock than hypothermia. By the time you are dying of hypothermia, I don't think you are swimming any more. Be that as it may, maybe cold water shock is also something for SteamFlyer to cover in his 2 minutes.

The cold shocking truth about cold water shock

Cold water shock causes involuntary body reactions that can be as swift as they are deadly

www.rya.org.uk

 

[floater]

Gulf War

cold water shock

these two don't fit together.

 

[dfw_sailor]

My key take away is crew on the boat may have not even heard about hypothermia or be aware of how quickly it can happen.

Swmbo was at the bow while we motored into the Port Arthur inlet (Tasmania). January (summer) but a chilly day that became cold as the sun dropped behind the hills.

She had old holey foulies on and did not realized how cold she had got (30 mins of motoring).

Once the anchor was dropped I realized how non communicative she had become. Blueish lips, stopped shivering, just out of it.

Belligerent when I told her to come below and get torso to torso skin happening. I was told in no uncertain terms she was tired and did not want sex right now.

"This is not about sex. You are too cold. You have stopped shivering. You are not making sense. We have to warm your core right now." Over and over.

From memory it took 5 minutes to get her to comply willingly with instructions.

I was shocked how quickly her core dropped.

Since then she thinks her captain is god and tells visitors to always do what the skipper asks straight away, and if they have questions they can ask later.

 

[Lex Teredo]

Having seen it a few time a key indicator is when somebody seems "stupid"

For people who are bundled up against the cold, it is hard to see a lot of the physical symptoms. Blue face, shivering - hah, normal cold & wet, embrace the suck stuff.


I'd refer to this kind of stupid as "disoriented, agitated or unusually argumentative," almost like a mid-stage Alzheimers patient. Saw this in the Army some, a guy is all bundled up, looks warm because no shivering, no frostbite showing, and he is pacing around in circles talking about having to get to the chow hall for breakfast. Somebody points out the obvious, it's 130 AM, so it's not breakfast time, we're in the field so there's no chow hall, and skippy decides to argue, and/or run for it. At which point he needs to be restrained and dragged somewhere to get warm.

As a victim of the milder version of hypothermia, violent shaking & etc., getting stripped down to underpants and into a sleeping bag with somebody else may be the quickest field expedient way of warming somebody, and it's okay to start that process by saying "dude, you're not going to like this, but." That happened to me in pretty mild weather, maybe 30 degrees or so, and we had appropriate gear on, but it had been in the low 70's all week with an unexpected temperature drop, we were sitting in a hole in the damp ground manning a well-hidden commo relay and observation post, and the wind was up. It can happen in 85 degree water too, if you spend enough time in it.

 

[LB 15]

these two don't fit together.

It snows in Iraq.

 

[Mark_K]

In colder climates, when a crew member becomes slow to respond, inactive and detached, you guys suspect Hypothermia. Down here we suspect they are hungover or got caught banging the Commodores wife in the committee room.

All jokes aside I have been Hypodermic 3 times. Once when i rode my pushbike of the dock in the UK in Feburary. Once during the '98 hobart race and once when I was caught in a Blizzard in a chairlift in Japan. It is no joke, the strangest part is not really caring what is happening too you.

The insidious factor is after the shivering stops you don't feel all that cold anymore and might fool yourself into thinking you're OK. A bit chilly around the edges but not that bad. I thought it felt like it does when getting into bed, before the bed warms up. Perhaps because the main thought was "Wouldn't a nap feel nice right now?"

 

[giegs]

I teach leaders to build checking in with their teams and assessing how everyone is responding to conditions/making adjustments into their normal workflow. Waiting for an obvious presentation of symptoms when ongoing assessment and adjustment is an option is big dumb. Done well, nobody needs to know that's what you're up to.