Question: what was the worst accident you have treated

Sarah Chalmers-Page answered on 29 Mar 2022:

Health Professionals have a range of specialities – relatively few directly treat accidents on a regular basis (specialists there would be paramedics, trauma surgeons, the teams working in A&E, and people like that). As a manager, I would be very little use in an accident – my skills might extend to phoning an ambulance and keeping the scene calm. Which I have done, once, when there was a young lady collapsed in my doorway when I lived in a city centre, and someone more medically competent than me was checking she was OK whilst I kept the people who were filming her and laughing well out of the way.

Despite that, health professionals from non-accident related specalities do often provide some medical help until more specialist teams arrive, even if they are not at work. So my husband is an infectious disease specialist doctor, and wouldn’t normally treat accidents. But in the time we have been together he has come across accidents a few times and my husband has helped patients with things like keeping them able to breath until the ambulance paramedics – who are far better at trauma than him – arrive. And during the Manchester riots in 2010 he saw that someone had collapsed in the street and had to cross through the police lines and the rioters to get to the person and help them until the ambulance could push through the crowds. It wasn’t gory – I think the man had had a heart attack- but it was frightening. Both from the point of view of pushing through rioting crowds and police horses, and from the point of view of fear of getting it wrong. A hospital based doctor is used to having equipment and monitors to help them make decisions, none of which are found in alleys behind Tescos. It was a massive relief – especially for the patient – when someone more expert in trauma arrived.