How to deal with injured victims ..... DON'T MOVE

Ahmed el-gazzar

 :Positioning of the patients 

Very important to stabilise injured people for fear of their fractures that might get worse with manipulation 

Once you've discovered the injury, you are not quite out of the woods until further help arrives.

In that time, correct positioning of the casualty can aid recovery in the same way that poor positioning can very easily aggrevate the injury or exacerbate the condition. Here are a few positions to consider.

Safe Airway Position

Without airway management equipment or techniques unconscious casualties will die on their back. We can open their airway with a simple head tilt but this does not prevent fluids (blood or saliva) draining down or coming up (vomit or blood) and entering the airway.

Any unconscious casualty should be positioned onto their side because, quite simply, if you don't have an airway, you don't have a casualty.

How to do it

• Remove the victim’s glasses, if present.

• Kneel beside the victim and make sure that both his legs are straight.
• Place the arm nearest to you out to you side – DO NOT place the shoulder and elbow at right angles. This is unnecessarily painful for people with limited range of movement and places pressure on the lower arm.Bring the far arm across the chest, and hold the back of the hand against the victim’s cheek nearest to you.

• Keeping their hand pressed against their cheek, pull on the far leg to roll the victim towards you on to their side.
• Adjust the upper leg so that both the hip and knee are bent at right angles.
• Tilt the head back to make sure that the airway remains open.
• Check breathing regularly.
• If the victim has to be kept in the recovery position for more than 30 min turn him to the opposite side to releive the pressure on the lower arm

Breathing : 

It's very important to expose the injured victim's chest and compare the respiratory movement on both sides, also check if there's a bulge or retraction on either sides, this denotes if there is fractured ribs or pneumothorax or haemothorax

After confirming the airway to the injured person, and his breath,  check his pulse,  rapid or slow.. Strongly or weakly felt. This is a good indicator of how bad he is injured 

Then, try to speak to the victim, ask him about his name, his current location, what day is it, all these point to the level of his consciousness 

Stabilise the victim is very important for fear of mobilisation of the fractures getting the victim onto agonising pain 

Don't give the victim food or drink , don't move him and wait for the paramedics till come