How to Assess for a Fracture During First Aid

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Sunshine. I'm with Sunshine Safety. We're located in Snellville, Georgia. I've been in the health and safety business for about fifteen years. I started out as a lifeguard when I was fifteen and eventually opened my own business. Today, we are going to talk about how to care for a suspected fracture. First and foremost, you do not need to know if it's a fracture, a break, a strain or a dislocation. Before you approach a victim, you do want to make sure that the scene is safe. If the scene is safe, approach your victim and ask for a consent. Once consent has been received, you want to make sure you always protect yourself from disease transmission, so you do want to place your gloves. Once you have your gloves, you are going to assess the situation. You want to expose the injury, if clothing is attached you may cut it away. If the bone is protruding from the skin, you want to make sure you add no pressure to the bone itself but you do need to control bleeding by adding pressure bandages around the bone. If EMS personnel is on the way, you do not need to bind the appendage. But if EMS is not on the way, you are going to need to bind the appendage yourself. The way we do that is we make sure that we have a hard or soft splint, for example a towel, and you also need two bandages to tie the towel on to the ankle. The first thing you want to do is without causing any further injury or pain, you want to place the soft splint around the ankle. If the victim has a shoe on, you do not remove the shoe unless you suspect severe bleeding. Once again without causing further pain or injury, you want to slide the bandage down the ankle, binding the soft splint to the foot. You do want to tuck any exposed bindings so that they do not get caught up. Once the ankle has been splinted, you and hopefully another rescuer can help assist the victim out of the area and get medical attention."