Thread: Medical Incident - Some learnings for your first aid kit.

Originally Posted by hotbarrels

I am a senior manager of a manufacturing business, and am well versed is risk management, health and safety and work place first aid, so please keep that in mind before commenting on my experience. Feel free to add your positive learning experiences.

1. Know where your first aid kit is at all times, what's in it and how to use it. Rehearse in you head or role play with you mates as to how you would deal with different situations and different injuries. For the products you carry in your kit, watch some youtube demos to get familiar. In a situation of stress, you need to rely on what you have practiced.
2. Stress, physical or mental, can impede you. Be conscious of this, adapt or compensate accordingly to ensure that you keep yourself safe. I thought I was, but then this happened ….

You are not an idiot, you actually did really well.

For reasons 1 and 7, health and safety and employment first aid training may be next to useless, bordering on counter productive, for outdoor first aid.

I have done three really serious after incident investigations for outdoor injuries for businesses. All these businesses had done their OHS and had protocols in place and were compliant. None of it actually worked. People did a bunch of completely random and bizarre shit which made absolutely no sense. Some of them were extremely experienced outdoorsman. No one went to jail for this because I was able to demonstrate they had an acute stress reaction (the psychological version shock).

When something happens to you outdoors, there are vastly more unconstrained variables (which run through your head at high speed) and the level of responsibility feels much higher. It is far from unusual for people to crack up.

The only way to prevent this is drill. You need to, as you put it, role play. It has to be a subconscious or shit can get very weird.

So you did good. Welcome to the "whoops I stabbed myself" club. Everyone is an idiot sometimes.