Sometimes its best to do nothing

I thought I'd share this experience.

Last Saturday I went to a paintball game as a chaperone for a school group. In the first 30 seconds of play a player on the other team slipped, fell, and fractured his femur (thigh bone). As a former EMT I was the only person at the field with a medical background. Since we were close to civilization (the field is in a city and we were less than a 1/4 mile from the road) I decided to immoblize the leg in place and wait for the ambulance and the proper splint/traction tools I knew they would have.

Patient wise, everything went okay. He was alert, not in much pain, not shocky, calm, had a good distal pulse, etc.

Bystander wise, I had my work cut out for me. First they wanted to carry him out to the road. Then they wanted to splint his leg with sticks. Then they wanted to straighten it out. Luckily I was able to quash these ideas before any further damage was inflicted. I hate to think what would have happened if these well intentioned people had acted just for the for the sake of doing something. No doubt the injury would have been worse.

The moral here is that we do need to think before we act.


Chris

or encourage people to at least take a first aid course. I think the training is a lot more significant than any of the doodads in a kit, although it is best to have both. And, yes, it is important to be able to practice crowd control in order to render proper care.