TACOMA with a side of ORM

So time for a second blogpost. As i'm sure Saxon and Fraggle can attest this blogging thing is a little harder than it first appears!! I can say that in the last 3 weeks lots has happened some of which may appear shortly here....
You can see on Saxons blog that him, Fraggle and myself went to the LDS national YSA convention over the bank holiday weekend and had great fun there. After that i returned to geeksville for 2 days before jetting off to Luxembourg to visit the parents for a week where great fun was had. While there i got a text from the boss at work saying that she was leaving :o
My first shift back was Friday this week and it was fun. I was working till 7 and then went out to the movies with Saxon J Alfred and some other people. While on the way i got a call from my brother who was at work saying they were short staffed and had had to send someone to the walkin centre as he got burnt because he wasn't wearing his PPE while cleaning a grill. Silly boy. Goes to show why we spend money buying PPE and telling the staff to wear it. I can claim a moral high ground here as i always were the proper PPE and make others do it when i see there not!

Due to there only being 2 people working for most of the shift last night my brother got hoe at about 3am and so slept in this morning. I went to take him to work and on the way home came across a man at the side of the road on the ground having a fit. This is where the blog post comes in. At work I've been first aid trained and my entire job revolves around the concept of TACOMA. Whats TACOMA i hear you cry!! Well its an acronym used by the US military and stands for TAke COntrol and Move Ahead. This is the essential aspect of Management-if you cant do this then you need to get out! I stopped The Car i was driving got out checked there was no danger to myself checked the man was breathing as there was no response when i shook him and talked to him then looked for a street sign as i called an ambulance. Another person stopped so i told them to sit with him while i was on the phone. As i was on the phone the man came round then a few minuted later the ambulance arrived in the form of an ECP in a response car. As she was on her own i waited a couple of minutes for the ambulance to arrive and then left them to do their jobs. Before the ambulance arrived someone came out from a house and got a chair for the man to sit on which was a really daft thing to do. If he'd had another fit he could have hurt himself if he fell to the floor as i was told on my first aid course and as the call taker reinforced to me. I said this however i was the youngest in a crowd of 7 or 8 people so nobody listened to me. As there were people around and he was in the chair and talking to us saying he was OK i applied a little ORM (another US term, Operational Risk Management) nd decided not to push the point-he didnt want to get out of the chair i could hear the ambulance coming and there were enough people next to the chair to catch him and place him on the ground if he had another fit. As he was OK i went and moved some cars that had stopped to allow the ambulance to stop next to the man without blocking the junction we were next to and waited for them to arrive. Its great how you feel proud of yourself for helping and serving others after the event, though i did the usual thing i do in that type of situation by taking control dealing with it then when its all over shaking a little as the delayed panic and stress sets in.


Training is great for preventing panic and to anyoen reading this who hasnt done a first aid course i highly reccomend you go do one. Its been invaluable to me and though i didnt save the mans life it could help you save someones!



Stay safe and if you all behave i might update you on what i got up to in Manchester and Luxembourg.......