The message reached us by radio that someone at the campus entrance had been stabbed.
Grabbing a first aid kit, I ran down with my shift-mate and cleared onlookers from around the casualty. He was a male student with a one-inch entry wound just above his waistband: no blood and, thankfully, no sausages hanging out.
My shift-mate summoned an ambulance and got a thermal blanket around the bloke’s shoulders while I fixed a pad on the wound and kept him talking. It transpired the student been attacked in the city centre but had staggered to us because he knew we could patch people up.
While security?staff are the primary medical response at the campus where I’m based, we’re supported by fellow patcher-uppers in the form of office staff who’ve also completed an Emergency First Aid at Work course. Or, at least, we were until they all began working from home.
That’s one of the reasons why this year I’m asking Santa for more first aiders on site. The UK’s Health and Safety Executive recorded 138 workplace deaths as a result of accidents last year, and a 2016 University of Manchester for the British Red Cross found that up to 59 per cent of injury-related deaths may have been prevented had first aid been given before an ambulance arrived.
We’re glad that many of the medical alerts we receive are non-serious: strong hangovers, or even students getting blisters from new shoes, for example. We’re also very grateful for those staff who are able to assist us in responding to them. But when we are responding to simultaneous fights, fire alarms and intruders, only to then receive an SOS asking us to attend a student who’s suffering a suspected miscarriage, we wish there were more of those helpers.
Regarding?that particular incident, I can’t help thinking, too, that the student would have been more comfortable being treated by her female lecturer than by an unfamiliar male. Instead, the lecturer simply requested that we remove the casualty from the room so the seminar on Victorian literature could resume.
I fully respect that some staff are squeamish and have no desire to get involved with bleeds, broken bones or bodily discharge. After all, those duties aren’t in their job description. I feel just as anxious when my daughter brings home schoolwork containing loose glitter that blizzards down onto her dinner as she shows it to me.
However, it makes sense for staff at least to be aware of which situations require a call to a first aider and which require a more serious response. For instance, we were recently summoned to a classroom where a student was suffering an absence seizure. The tutor informed us that they had waited five minutes from the start of the incident before contacting us – apparently because of a confused interpretation of NHS?, which recommend calling an ambulance if the casualty seizes for more than five minutes.
At least the tutor knew how to raise the alarm, which is almost as essential as knowing the location of the nearest first aid kit to your work area. If you’re a member of staff and have a kit within dashing distance, be prepared to be asked for its whereabouts even if you’re working from home. Security may have to raid your stash if our own kit is running low (on disposable gloves at the height of the pandemic, for instance).
In that spirit, I’d like to suggest that this December, instead of the very generous tub of festive chocolates that is sometimes gifted to security guards, university staff instead spend their Christmas cash on medical equipment. They could either purchase for themselves some potentially life-saving equipment or even gift some to us (we’ll be checking in any parcels over the Christmas shutdown, particularly those that come down the chimney).
?would be my top priority: it significantly slows blood loss so will come in handy should someone suffer a more serious stab wound than the one we attended. In an arterial bleed, for instance, ?a life-threatening amount of blood can be lost in just?; in London, the average ambulance response to a major incident is?.
Just as useful is an?, favoured by medics and front-line operatives for its versatility. As well as featuring a locking cleat to quickly apply pressure to severe wounds, it can also be used as a makeshift arm sling – and even for migraine relief if cooled and pressed gently to the head.
If working alone and in a phone signal dead zone, campus users should also consider having an??close by – a truly life-saving piece of kit for anyone unlucky enough to suffer an arterial cut.
A final remedy comes not from the emergency kit but from the tub of festive chocolates itself. Not only will three sweets meet the recommended sugar dosage for someone suffering a?, they also come in very handy when treating a mildly injured but very vocal child.
For medicinal reasons, though, do not exceed the recommended dose. And remember: whatever form of first aid equipment you acquire, it’s no use to anyone in your office desk drawer unless you’re working next to that drawer. Unlike Santa, we can’t all see through walls and magic ourselves through locked doors.
Stay safe and have a merry Christmas.
George Bass is a security guard at a UK university.
