…because you will die!(A recent study showed that the surviving rate for the victim of a heavy traffic accident with possibly life-threatening injuries in industrial settings is at the lowest point around 8.00AM) A friend of mine, which used to install electric arrangements at my girlfriends flat told me about an accident he had several months ago. He struck over a moped driver and he did a summersault right into the greener side of the road. His experience was, besides from beeing the idiot, of the hour that nobody really pulled over except
1) One off duty police officer coming home from his shift
2) One off duty firefighter
3) A boy, something about 14-16 years of age
This experience is something, which in my years of nursing and medicals practice and also years of volonteer fire service, natural to me. I really don’t expect easy first aid from bystanders or members of public. During my first years it was kind of frustrating but now I have given up my rage.
In this times, people don’t give a shit about other people…or the people are over-caring the whole system. The span of our society between good and bad people is getting bigger, there are less gray zones.
The only time where people give a shit is, when they experience the same or at least the likewise amount of disaster. If people experiencing a bad situation together, you can really see that the solidarity between completely unknown people rises. I have seen this around some heavy summer storms where basements where filled with water (and a whole street r block was drowned) or during bad exceptional storms like Kyrill….but this is different.
I speak to a damn female university student, which has the main subject catholic theology and chemistry for teaching. She tells me about her stress (I didn’t know her until this conversation) and that she doesn’t know how to put all the things she must obviously do into her 24hours day and 7 days week. Then she kindly asks me what I’m doing, and I tell her that I’m a nurse.
I don’t really give a shit about random people. But I’m not a bastard at all. If I read a newspaper about some corpse from a traffic or railroad accident, I don’t feel a single second of dismay, because why should I worry about it? I have enough things to worry, sad story and I really don’t want to think about the relatives but after 5 seconds even this little to no dismay is gone. I have to give a shit in my job, it is my profession and I’m payed to care about people and their requirements. And not only physical requirements, I mean anything. I give a lot of shit to the people I have in my care even if I don’t like them but I get payed to set back my personal displeasing and I’m trained to do so. PERIOD.
In my second job as a firefighter I do not get payed to care about, but I chose to care about the citizen in danger and his belongings. If I’m not into the whole caring module of firefighting I probably need to look for other options to endure my free time.
In my private life I also care about many people who are very important to me, but this is usual as everybody does that.
But if some lucky loser is laying on the street with a stroke or a bad wound on his head, it is not a feasible argument that I don’t care about random people why should I care about this victim of coincidence? Everybody will need help someday even from complete strangers, it is something that you will get back some day in some time, without any payment and without anything than a thank you and a handshake from the paramedics. But this should really be adequate.
Most people have either a highly god-like image of a nurse or they have the image of some pricks sitting in an office doing nothing but drinking coffee and flirting with doctors. She REALLY told me: “Well you got an easy life as a nurse!”
“Why ? And then she says “I have to get up at 06:00 and then I have to take the first bus at 6:45 to catch the train at 7:15 so I can be at my first lecture around 7:50!” Inside myself I deeply think and amuse myself. Then I tell her, that the time you went up my work starts and the time you place your ass right in the university chair I have done washing 4 to 8 patients or I’m busy preparing patients for things.
“But you don’t have such a big responsibility than I will have as a teacher!”
I really like these comparisons between completely different jobs.
Some minutes later, we bypassed the usual first conversational bullshit some party guest had drunk way to much and sat opposite of us, doing not so well…he knew my conversational partner and told her “Ah I’m not feeling good!”
She shakes my shoulder like a moron….”Well you gotta do something, you are a nurse!”
And I said, no you are the one claiming you’ll have the bigger responsibility…so let’s rock!”
She felt challenged and went over to him, did some fancy shaking of his head and tried to move him over to more fresh air (Despite the fact that we acutally WERE outside in the garden, but let’s just cut this out!) which was not a good idea because the guy fell down in the grass.
She felt helpless and tried to move him up, which didn’t work but looked quite funny…then all of a sudden she outburts
“You’re a bastard, you can be legally charged with non-assistance of a person in danger!”
I paused a little bit and told her”Well, this “PATIENT” here is not in any real danger , he just drank too much let’s just help him to arrange himself to get home and place him in a bed!”
I showed him the way out and his bike, and then he grabbed the handlebar and went home in a, almost too strict, line. <--Patient happy, Helper satisfied
After this a discussion about first aid blew out the last remaining persons. I will not summon the usual, I just want to state what is my impression of me as a medical-trained first-responder.
In case anything happens, nobody is responsible for first aid because it is not her problem, BUT if there is a medical trained person in the room he is the only one responsible for help.
This is the particular reason why I carry around more than a bandage-packet in my car, this is the reason why I have a bigger first aid kit. In case anything happens, I'm alone and I can have the highest responsbile persons, bosses, CEO's, master chiefs and maybe leading humans around me...in case you need first aid, the lower-class nurse has the highest responsibility and the barking bastards convert into shoulder-twitching bystanders with lots of index fingers.
Any person who is able to put a nail in a wall is able to place a warning-triangle. Any person who is able to wash his car is able to put a person in recovery position. It's always the same, it requires training and it's so easy to do. But there won't be much more people surviving on the street IF first aid training is mandatory in a fixed time corridor. It just stretches the willingness and the responsibility of people. It just puts the responsibility to get yourself trained in several things over to a bigger and even higher allmighty mass. It won't change the fact that people are driven by greed, anxiety and the struggle to care for themselves and doesn't give a shit. They are a few exceptions, but these people don't need much training in first aid because they do more than the usual.
I offer anybody in my far-friend-circle first aid training but I don't ask for it...they have to ask me. Any step towards the question if they are interested can be far over-interpreted as smartassing or self-presentation. Not my board of game.
Some people tell me "Wow....if you are on a scene everybody survives"..but this won't be the fact. The chance that these people will get better is higher, but I can't do magic tricks on the street, and even less, If I'm without my equipment. Easy-standard-first-aid isn't worse than my kind of first aid. You don't have much items in your toolbox, my toolbox is filled with lots of things and this isn't easy to always pick the right tool. People with no backround-knowledge don't think far and don't think so much..they just do and follow the algorhythm. Which is enough for people who are not trained in medicine.
There must be a gray zone, a zone between the one particular person who doesn't care at all OR thinks that he is the master of the situation and tells everybody not to move the patient and leave him alone. There must be a gray zone between people who don't know shit and the ejaculated ladies who are so proud that they managed to do a recovery position the first time of their life in their first aid course.
Be a part of that gray zone
My rage is away, learn first aid!
Stephan
["If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear!"]
July 12th, 2009 von 
Stephan 
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