So I went for a run tonight by the seafront, (and found out that I'm 35!). It was a good run, I was working hard, walked for a bit, got offered a bottle of water and some sheesha, gratefully accepted the water, turned down the sheesha. I was headed back, headphones on, jammin' out, trying to keep up with the beat of the music when I suddenly heard the most horrific crash and deep resonating boom behind me. The guys in front of me who were headed my way suddenly stopped, and the looks on their faces told me everything I needed to know. We all went running into the roadway to try and get a look at it. About half a mile back behind me, a dust and sand cloud had popped up, all I could see were taillights, but horns and panicked shouts were pretty apparent. I looked at the other two guys and simply said "car accident?" They nodded frantically. I headed back at a run, got about halfway before I decided a jog would be more appropriate if I wanted to make it there alive. Darted across traffic which is a lot like playing frogger here, did a quick scene size up and found myself with 30 or so bystanders, pretty much with no medical training, 3 patients and two badly damaged cars. Decided to focus on this one kid, pretty young, maybe 16/17, front seat unrestrained passenger, obvious head injury from mechanism and the fact that he was laying supine in the roadway, was non-verbal and had BIG dilated pupils (still awake though). His right leg was laid off to the side in a less than natural position and angle, so I took a guess that it was a femur fracture on that side. After what seemed like a lifetime the ALS truck finally arrived on scene, and I looked up to see a kid about 5 years older than the patient, very calm and quiet, first thing he did was put the kid on a pulse ox and listen to lung sounds...I was all set to strangle him with that damn stethoscope when he started doing a true trauma assessment, care was substandard to say the least, in the states I would have put this kid on 02 and had 2 large bore IV's flowing before my partner got back with the trauma gear. I also would have sized the c-collar before trying to fit one that obviously wasn't going to fit. I would have beat my partners ass black and blue when I found out it took 10 minutes and 3 trips to the ambulance to prepare the traction splint, and I sure as hell wouldn't have just slid the guy on the board the way they did, fastened down with one strap and no head blocks, but what can you do. Good run, good experience for me, bad luck for my students, apparently this is considered adequate....well its not...the bar just got raised again, I will not turn out students who do shit like that. I'll fail every damn one of them and kicked out of the kingdom before I let that happen.
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