Using OEC training TR

So yesterday was a pretty normal day, class then fishing. On the way back from fishing I see a bunch of my friends at the local crag, I stop and chat a bit then follow them back towards town. I come around a corner and see a car with a smashed front end revving in the middle of the road, meanwhile my friends have their car stopped and everyone is running towards the crashed car, I stop and size up the scene, 2 adults 2 kids, the lady crawls out the car and we help her lay down where she passes out. All of my friends had just completed their wilderness first aid training and they split up and start doing initial evaluations of the victims. One person calls 911 and we send a car to haul ass back towards town and tell them to call 911 as soon as they have good cell phone reception. Everyone is alive (thank god) the driver had a broken jaw (I think) the passenger had a concussion, possible broken ribs a bruise on the neck, and went into shock for a bit. We try to comfort the kids who were in child seats, the little girl had a few contutions and complained of rib pain we wrapped her in a blanket and comforted her the best we could because thats all we really could do (outside of initiating transport) meanwhile the driver is up and out of the seat smoking a cig. and being a DIC (disoriented, irrated and confused) patient, we wanted him to sit down and wrap himself in a blanket to avoid shock but he insisted on walking around. The little boy was in great shape we kept him warm put him in the car seat (which we had taken out of the car by now) and kept c-spine on him. We kept checking the pulse of the passenger she was coming out of shock but still pretty freaking woozy. After about a half an hour the EMTs showed up and did their thing (immobalized the patients on backboards and got them the hell out of there). Nobody thought twice about getting people out of that car (I was kinda freaked out cause I thought we might find corpses). My friends all had huge balls and used their training and might have saved a life. I was proud (and so freaking glad) that they were there.

Morals of the story:
DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE! (both adults were drunk)
WEAR YOUR SEATBELT! (the driver probably wouldn't have broken his jaw with a seat belt)
CHILD SEATS WORK! Both kids were and if both kids were actually strapped in (ones seat wasn't strapped to the car???) both would have been fine
CARRY A FIRST AID KIT WITH GLOVES IN YOUR CAR we got lucky as hell that they didn't need CPR because nobody had a kit, we exposed ourselves to blood when we shouldn't have
HAVE A CAR WITH AIRBAGS I'm convinced, I'll never had a car without them the car hit willows hard enough to bounce 40 feet then bounce back 10 feet :eek: no seatbelts and the driver kinda sorta walked away.
TRAIN! Our training as ski patrollers is great, and you never know when you are gonna use it


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Congrats on doing the right thing. It is always good to have the right training at the right time. The adults sound like idiots to risk their kids lives like that.

I had to use my WMI training about a week and a half ago when some friends and I witnessed a biker hit a curb head on going about 20ish. His front tire tacoed and he flew about 15 feet and landed right on his face. I started running over to the guy and called for my friend Lauren to come help out (SAR training, also a Wilderness Instructor like I am). We found the patient face down in a quickly growing pool of blood. He was unresponsive so we got him into anatomical position with a proper rolling technique to clear/manage an airway. He was bleeding so much from his face and mouth that his eye sockets filled up with blood- something I'd never imagined could happen. He had knocked out several teeth too, which were in the now very large pool of blood.

We were able to clear enough blood out his mouth that he was able to breath. He slowly came to a little bit, but never was more than A+OX1, so we couldn't even begin to think about clearing the spine. Being that this was in downtown Boulder, we didn't do a head to toe- just monitored vitals and csms which were both good. We ran the scene for about 15 minutes till paramedics arrived. It was quite a crazy experience.

There was a little bit of "what to do" when we first got there because of the obvious MOI for spinal, but we were more concerned with an airway so we rolled him off his face. It was my call to do so- somebody had to make a decision and we weren't able to tell if he was breathing ok from the position he was in. I think it was the right thing to do.

Apparently the guy ended up being ok after some oral surgery and many, many stitches to his face.

We did do a few things wrong, (not getting the passenger in C spine ASAP) and not extracating the kids by just lifting their child seats out (great back board)

Seems to me you did the right thing
1 Scene Safety
2 ABCs
3 C Spine

Man that biker coulda been me once, I definately ate crap going 25 once, good thing I landed in grass and not on a curb! :eek:

Those mistakes are so small compared to the help you gave. Having made several lifeguarding saves and a few first aid responses the best thing you did that most people forget is comforting the victims and trying to prevent shock. So many amateur responders thing CPR CPR that they forget about shock and calming the victims down. Freaking out patients can walk around on a shattered leg like nothing is the matter all the while compounding their injury. Good job.

props man!! i still haven't used my woofer skills yet, but way to go on doing the right thing