How to Splint a Fracture of the Lower Arm in the Wilderness

Video Transcript

"Let's talk for a minute about how you would splint a fracture of the lower arm in the wilderness. There are a couple of ways you can do this. First of all I would advise everybody who is going out into the wilderness to bring what is called a Sam Splint with them and it is a very versatile splint that can be used for your arms, legs, ankles, really any part of your body nearly. So the key when you are splinting your arm is to immobilize it. Any time you move it can do damage to yourself, it is extremely painful and you just want to try to prevent that from happening so assuming you have a Sam Splint with you what you want to do is bend the entire splint into sort of a C shape to add the stability to it. When you have bent it this way it is much more resistant to moving around and it is much more stable which is exactly what you need so once you have vent it into a C shape you are going to fold it in half like so, you're going to put it around your arm like this and now you want to make sure that you firmly cup your arm inside the splint like this. Make sure it is nice and firm so your arm can't move and what you are going to do is tape around it to make sure that it stays in place. Another measure you might want to take is to put your arm in a sling. A sling can be made out of a shirt or even just a small piece of rope or a shoelace even just to sort of keep your arm close to your body and help prevent further movement that way. Now if you don't have a Sam Splint with you there are other ways which you could splint your arm. You could even just use a couple of sticks. You want to cut the sticks to about the length of your lower arm and put the sticks on either side of your arm. You are going to want two sticks and typically you can run a piece of tape around it to hold it in place. If you don't have tape you could use a shoe lace. You could even rip part of your shirt off and just make sure that the two sticks stay in place to prevent your arm from moving."