When a serious accident takes place and emergency injuries occur, time is of the essence. Fortunately, even if you do not have specialized medical knowledge, there are still many things you can do to help victims in these situations. To make sure you don’t have to just stand by and watch someone else suffer needlessly, here are some tips to keep in mind on how to handle these emergency situations.
Remain Calm
Above all, don’t panic. Since the person who is injured may already be distressed, keeping your wits about you will help the victim calm down. If you can, use your smartphone to call 9-1-1 so that rescue personnel can get to your location immediately to treat them.
Administer First Aid
While you are waiting for rescue personnel to arrive, you can still administer many types of basic first aid in the meantime. For example, if the accident victim is bleeding, apply pressure to the wound to minimize or stop the bleeding. Also, if the victim is unconscious and is not breathing, you can use hands-only CPR to get them breathing again.
Seek Medical Assistance
In some instances, after an accident, emergency injuries may not begin to display symptoms until hours later. This is particularly true with back, neck, and head injuries, all of which can be very serious if they don’t receive proper treatment. Should you or a family member begin to experience difficulties following an accident, it is best to seek advanced injury care and get examined by a doctor at once. Since such a facility can offer same-day appointments, transportation if necessary, and provide on-site pain injections and more, this is one trip that should not be delayed.
Document What Happened
No matter what type of accident you or a family member were involved in, always make sure you try to document as much as possible in order to convey what led to the accident and injuries. For example, if you were involved in a car accident, always be as specific as possible when speaking to police and rescue personnel at the scene. Since it is always possible legal action may need to take place at a later date, having all injuries and other important facts well-documented in police reports can make a tremendous difference.
From using your common sense to keep an accident victim calm to administering basic first aid that may save someone’s life, knowing how to properly handle an emergency injury after an accident can help a bad situation turn out much better than anticipated for you and everyone else.
This article is from Brooke Chaplan, a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.
