Nobody in the UK has ever been sued for giving first aid to a patient, or accused of assault. As long as you act within your training and in good faith you are completely fine legally. It's not a risk unless you try to do something that you've never been trained to. There is legislation in place that specifically covers this.There are good reasons why not. From the risks of something going wrong to the possibility of staff being accused of assault, you can imagine any number of unpleasant scenarios. Generally it’s always going to be best to get the emergency services to someone asap. DOO only makes that harder of course.
No first aider in the UK has ever ended up in civil or criminal court for acting within training, or Coroners except as a witness to describe what occurred either and there is no need to have witnesses. The only reason you say what you're doing is to reassure the patient that you're helping them, it's not to protect yourself against anything. There's no need to be insured. This is not the US.It needs to be backed by insurance really rather than just something you do yourself in order to be a first aider in a work context. I did the 3-day course several times over the years while at work (office based) and was insured to act. First aid can go horribly wrong and, regardless of intention someone 'abusing' (effectively!) someone else can end up in court, or, worse coroners court. If acting you really also need witnesses and say what it is you are doing etc.
Because it's never happened and never would if you can show that you're acting within training and in good faith, as above.In this day and age the risk of being accused of sexual assault is not a myth or fake news at all. As for “I guarantee…” how can you possibly make such a statement?
No you won't. as above it has never happened. Noone who knows what they're doing would attempt to move themIf someone has fallen ill and caught and broken their neck on their way to the floor and you helpfully drag them back to their seat paralysing them for life, rest assured you will be sued.
OTOH if someone is lying with no pulse the situation is different because whatever you do you're (probably) not making it worse. But do you know how to check for a pulse, do you know how to elicit a response from someone just messing about, do you know how to put someone in the recovery position?
Personally I think that basic life saving should be taught to everyone regardless of whether they ever use it... (having said that my first aid training and involvement is decades ago now so what do I know)
As a fellow professionally qualified person I can't like this post enough compared to some of the ill informed nonsense in this thread.I am an Emergency Medicine consultant and have found some of the responses on here either terrifying, funny (we do a lot of very black humour) or occasionally sensible (thanks for those).
Few points....
1. In our department (full of emergency medicine docs and nurses) we have to have a nominated number of first aiders! These are mostly health care assistants - hugely valuable but the least qualified members of the team, who will immediately ask someone else what to do - quite rightly, given where we work. I am astounded that the same rules that apply in offices, shops, airports (as I understand) and hospitals re: first aiders don't apparently apply on the railways. There should be first aiders on the railway.
2. As there are automated defibrillators on most, if not all, major stations and others too I wonder if railway staff would really wait for a passenger to get on and attach/use it should someone collapse? Surely basic training is given to station staff??
3. You will never be convicted in a British court if you are an untrained bystander trying to save a life. Clearly if that involved obviously inappropriate behaviour that would be different. If I tried to intervene however after an evening in the pub and made a cock up - then that would be different - as I would be deemed to have the knowledge to know when it was appropriate to intervene and when not to.
4. Sometimes you have to do something even if it seems unwise in other circumstances (someone earlier mentioned a neck injury and paralysis). Extreme example - drag someone off the track with a potential neck injury or let them be sliced up by an approaching train. Possible bad things vs certain death???
5. You are more likely to be criticised by a judge or coroner for doing nothing rather than trying your best to do something.
Happy Easter (I can now enjoy a few glasses of red having worked all weekend)
Having the What Three Words app on your phone is incredibly useful to blue light services too, it's much quicker than trying to describe somewhere out of the way.112 is the worldwide emergency number and will connect from mobiles even if there is no signal on your network.
Last year we were chatting to an RNLI rep and she said to use 112, especially on coastal areas where mobile signal can be patchy as it is better at locating where the call is coming from.
When I called 999 at Christmas the call handler gave the coordinates of where I was calling from as it was from a mobile. Useful to locate a caller if its a fake call, but also good to locate where the incident is happening.
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