First-Aid, Psychological First-Aid and CEO meet: A Real-Life Case Study
Last week, I was one of the first people to arrive at the scene of a car accident. It was about 9:30 am. I was on my way to the post office and then to work when I was slowing down on the main road near my home to find a big passenger van turned completely over on its side, glass all in the road and a bunch of 20-somethings standing around outside looking unsure and disoriented. Everyone had already been able to climb out and onto the street. There were no emergency personnel onsite yet… no police, ambulance, firefighters…. And no civilian first responders were yet there, although many people continued slowly driving by on the narrow, two-lane rural highway.
I don’t remember going-back-and-forth at all trying to decide if I should stop to offer help. I just decided to stop. I put on my hazard lights and parked my car about 20 meters behind the overturned van and young folks to provide some protection from traffic coming from the same direction. The moment I parked, I remembered I didn’t have my first aid kit with me. I had left it with the new school project we started this year. All at once as I was getting out of the car, I took the little blow of memory, hoped I wouldn’t need it and knew I would just have to make due with whatever I had in the car….I quickly remembered my knife, multitool, water bottle, isopropyl alcohol, a blanket, bandana…
As I walked up to the closest members of the group slowly, I was also assessing the accident site itself… especially the overturned van. Were we safe there so close to it? Was it going to blow up or catch fire? Was there another car involved? Any obvious emergency victims?? With a caring but concerned smile I approached the first three girls and introduced myself.
“Hi, my name is Lorie. I live here, just over the hill. I am trained in First-Aid and Psychological First-Aid and I’d like to offer help if anyone needs it. Is that ok?” Two of the three girls nodded shyly, one’s eyes started to fill with tears and she said, ‘yes’.
“Ok, great. Are you three ok? Are you injured?” They said they didn’t think they were injured and as they told me a bit about what had happened, I visually looked them over to double check for injury. Two of them seemed more-or-less ok, the one who had started to cry looked a bit in shock and was starting to release some of the traumatic impact of the accident. “Ok’, I told them. ‘I'm going to stay with you all until help arrives. Stay together here away from the glass and I’m going to go check on the others.
I noticed that the driver of the van seemed to be some kind of ‘leader’ of the moment. He was the only one obviously ‘doing something’... on the phone… getting paperwork…perhaps the oldest (not by much)... the only male…. so I went to him next to introduce myself just as I had to the first three ladies and offer my support. He had already called the police and ambulance who were apparently on their way from a town 30 kilometers away. And he was very apparently in shock. I could see the adrenaline running through his body: rigid, tense and upright, skin moist from heat although it was cool out, unsettled and pacing, worried/ scared expression, shallow/ quick breaths, darting and wide eyes…
“I here to help you,” I told him, “is that Ok?”. He softened just a bit and nodded shakily. Immediately, his eyes began to fill with tears and his body began to shake. My heart filled with compassion for him. “It was really scary,” I told him. I reflected out loud to him what I saw in his face in an effort to let him know that I understood. In an effort to provide attuned care. He started to cry a bit more, nodding. “It was really scary”, I said again nodding as I stretched out my arms offering him a hug. He came in to receive the hug and as I held him, I told him, “It’s ok… everyone looks ok… I’m going to stay here with you until everyone is safe. We’ll figure it out together, ok?” “Ok,” he said. “Thank you.”
Triage continued. Aside from the young woman who had been crying and perhaps experiencing shock, I was concerned primarily for the male driver, another young woman with glass in her leg and head but more seriously, for one young woman who seemed to have some kind of head injury. The look on her face was very serious and concerned. She was pacing uncomfortably and holding the side of her face. She told me that the left side of her left jaw was hurting a lot, that her head was hurting very badly and that her vision was a bit off. She said it was strange because she had been in a window seat on the side of the van that ended up hitting the pavement- but it was the other side of her face that felt injured. I didn’t see any immediate signs of injury- bruising, blood, swelling, and asked if I could touch to further assess. I gently cradled her head in my hands, palpating softly at first with caution for pain and then a little more firmly. I was assessing for deeper level swelling, for something out of place or broken, for the temperature and tone of the skin. I didn’t feel any obvious injury, which I conveyed to her.
She asked me, “Do you think I have a brain injury?”
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “It’s possible that your head, neck and body just got very badly rattled in the impact and that’s why your head hurts. But just to be sure we need to get you to a hospital to get you checked out by medical staff, ok?”
“Ok,” she said, with a worried look.
I heard the male driver speaking tensely to someone on the phone and walked over to him. He was on speakerphone with a man who was basically yelling at him- telling him, “THIS IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY! YOU NEED TO CALL THE INSURANCE COMPANY! YOU NEED TO FIGURE THIS OUT YOURSELF!” The driver’s girlfriend was part of the group- she was more-or-less fine, uninjured, calm, present.
“Who is this that he is speaking to,” I asked her?
“The boss,” she said. “The owner of the surf company.”
I had my own brief moment of shock and appall. I felt so many things in the span of five seconds. Anger, rage, fear, abandonment, determination, compassion, empowerment, doubt. The driver had done the right thing. In a way, he was responsible for all these young women. They were all 20-something travelers from another country who were paying guests of the surf school’s guesthouse and this morning, were being taken to a beach somewhere in a van (property of the surf school) by an employee of the surf school (the driver) to go surfing at the beach with surf school employees. When the accident happened, the driver (a 20-something young man himself), with the support of his girlfriend, had made sure that everyone got out of the van, had called emergency services and had called his boss to let him know what had happened and ask for help with what to do.
Instead of taking responsibility for his clients, his employee, his property and offering them his absolute support, he had basically freaked out, yelled at the driver who was already scared and in shock, put all of the burden of responsibility on this young employee, hung up the phone and went MIA for the rest of the saga which lasted about four hours in total. “What a fucking asshole!” I thought to myself, as I realized that we were basically alone out here. Now, I know good and damn well that we people don’t always react in helpful ways when confronted with stress or crisis. It’s why Claiming Each Other exists. But still, it was very frustrating and disheartening to encounter such skill-less-ness and carelessness in a moment of need.
It had been about an hour already and no emergency services had arrived. It was the first rain of the season and when I called the police station of the nearest town to ask if there was anyone at all who could come help us, they apologized and said there was many accidents that morning because of the newly slick road and that all personnel were at other accident sites and no one was yet available. So it was just us out there, left to figure it out.
Meanwhile, another young lady employee from the same surf school had showed up with an empty van. I introduced myself to her and knew it was time to start getting people organized and out of there. The driver was becoming overwhelmed again with the burden of responsibility put on him by the owner of the company and trying to call the insurance company who was not answering.
“This is NOT your fault,” I told him. “This was an accident. Accidents happen. I’m sorry your boss is not helping you right now. This is HIS responsibility to support us and it’s not ok that he has put this all on you. But I’m going to help you. Don’t worry about the insurance right now. Let’s get the clients organized to get out of here and then we’ll figure out what to do with the van. Hopefully the police and ambulance will be here soon to help us too.”
The second driver and I began to coordinate. She was also young, and I think that she initially assessed that ‘everyone is ok’, because she suggested that maybe she could just take all the clients to the beach as planned. Two of the uninjured ladies agreed- yes, they would still like to go to the beach. Two of the others with glass in their feet or just a little shaken nodded hesitantly, as if to say, “ok… yes… I guess we can go to the beach”.
“The beach trip is off for now,” I said to the group decisively. “Maybe you’ll be able to go surfing this evening, but for now, we need to get organized to get some of us to the hospital. So let’s talk about the options: 1) If you feel like you would like to be checked out by a medical professional, ‘D’ (the second driver) will drive you to the hospital, 2) you can go back to the surf camp and just chill out there to regroup.” D suggested that she could first drop off the two who wanted to go to the beach on the way to the hospital. “Ok”, I said.
I looked at D and said, “Get everybody’s phone number who is going with you. These are guests of your hostel and they’re going to different places now. It’s important that you are able to communicate and keep track of each other as needed. And take my phone number too. Call me if you need support.” She diligently took everyone’s number and we agreed together on which hospital they would go to. They all got in the van and off they went, leaving me, the young male driver and his girlfriend there to sort out the rest. In hindsight, I should have veto-ed dropping the two off at the beach first even though it was on the way. I should have prioritized getting the girls with the head injury and glass in their body to the hospital. My apologies to them, wherever they are.
While all of this was happening, there were ‘down moments’ of waiting. I used that time to help direct the traffic around the accident site. The oncoming traffic came from around a blind curve so I tried to help people coming from both directions to get around us safely. Some people barely reduced their speed and just passed us by like nothing. Others were caring and kind enough to slow down, roll down their window and ask if we were ok… if we needed help. “We’re ok, thank you,” I told them. “Help is on the way.”
One lady who slowed down to ask said she was a nurse, and did we need her? Since ‘everyone was ok’, I told her ‘no, thank you’. And she left. If I could do it all again, I would have accepted her offer to help. My mom, who was an emergency room nurse for 30 years, reassured me that I did the right things and that the nurse would have done exactly what I did. But still, I feel like the universe sent a medical professional to help and I said, ‘no, thank you.’ Seems kind of silly. A second set of trained eyes and hands onsite and someone who would’ve ‘outranked’ me would likely have offered some extra support and peace of mind. Well… Live and learn. During these ‘down moments’, I also tried to call the police again and…. I got the phone number for ‘the boss’ who had yelled at the young driver and left him a VERY stern message.
I introduced myself. I told him I lived nearby and about my trainings. I told him I was here helping HIS employees and HIS young, paying customers and coordinating to get HIS vehicle out of the road. I told him I was consciously taking time out of my life and my work schedule to be of service and that I heard his conversation with the driver and actually, ‘It is YOUR role as the business owner to take responsibility for the safety and wellbeing of your employees, clients and property in an emergency situation”. I told him the the driver was in shock, some of the clients had been injured and went to the hospital and that it would be VERY HELPFUL if HE could get on the phone to coordinate a tow truck to get the van out of the road so that the driver and his girlfriend could leave the accident site and get to somewhere safe that they could decompress.
I never heard from him. He never responded.
We were able to get a hold of the manager of the hostel, another 20-something year old and the other owner, the man’s wife. I was pretty stern with her by the time I got on the phone with her. By that time the police had arrived and had immediately taken over directing traffic and reporting the details of the accident. We’d been there over two hours at this point. The ambulance came next. The driver and girlfriend coordinated facts and figures with them… what happened? Where are the others? Where did they go? Were they injured? We need their IDs. Etc, etc.
I spoke to the manager and female owner of the hostel and basically told them what needed to happen. “1: get a tow truck here. 2: Send someone to wait with the overturned van so that the driver and girlfriend can get out of here. They need to rest. 3: talk to D, the second driver. Check on her and all the guests. 4: This is NOT this young driver's fault. Tell him that yourself and let him know that you’re here to help and support him.
And guess what. She did it. Well…. They sent two cars, one with the manager who would sit there himself until the tow truck arrived and one with a friend to get the driver and girlfriend home. She coordinated to get the tow truck there and I am assuming and hoping that she did the rest. She was very calm, understanding and grateful for my help on the phone. She provided the calm, responsible leadership we needed from ‘the boss’ that her husband failed to offer.
Before the friend took the driver and the girlfriend away I called a little ‘team meeting’ between them and the manager. “Check on each other this evening and in the coming days,” I told them. It's normal to experience changes in sleep patterns, appetite or digestion, to feel extra fatigued, for your body to shake or to cry. This is your body working to release and process the stress of this situation. It’s important that you all take care of each other. If in a few days you feel like you’re still not quite yourself, call me and I can offer more support. You have my number.” They thanked me, hugs all around and they left. I collected my blanket and water bottle, said goodbye to the manager and the police (who were very sweet and also thanked me genuinely for my support as a good-neighbor). It was a nearly four hour saga from my arrival to my departure.
Once all the young girls had been taken off-site to the beach and hospital and the police arrived, I focused all my effort in supporting the driver and girlfriend. This didn’t always involve a constant ‘doing’. Sometimes I was just there… being present and available, as I said I would until it was done. I offered them water, a place to sit, a listening ear and hugs and back rubs. Every time he received my caring attention, his eyes welled up with tears. The adrenaline of the ‘to do’s’ and the tense discomfort of waiting on the side of the road at the accident site would subside temporarily and we would just be people comforting each other. “It’s all ok,” I told him. “Everyone is going to be ok and you didn’t do anything wrong”. He had blown 0% on the breathalizer and none of the passengers indicated that he was speeding or driving irresponsibly. Even the police said they almost lost control of their vehicle on the way to the site because of the wet roads. Accidents just happen sometimes.
Two or three times with his eyes in tears he really looked at me… saw me through all the chaos he was experiencing on the inside… and said…”Thank you for staying with me,” “you’re like an angel”, “I can’t believe you just stayed here with us to help”. It makes my eyes water and my heart swell with emotion just writing this… just remembering.
This situation was perhaps more squarely in the jurisdiction of my First Aid and Psychological First Aid (PFA) training. Where First-Aid attends to injuries of the physiological body in many different circumstances, PFA most specifically prepares people to respond to psychological distress after community scale natural disasters. It’s not trauma treatment. It is early, caring intervention in order to mitigate the onset of trauma and PTSD. This was perhaps the first time I’ve actually used my PFA training in a semi-emergency group situation. I could clearly see how different it was from traditional first-aid, especially as I noticed that police and ambulance workers showed little to no concern over the group's psychological wellbeing upon assessing that physical injuries had been handled.
But I saw it. Some of my fellow humans were scared, hurt, in shock and didn’t know what to do. It was so clearly a Claiming Each Other moment.
Distinct from PFA, Claiming Each Other (CEO) acknowledges that in the day-to-day, most of us are more likely to be exposed to or experience a domestic or relational crisis rather than a natural disaster. And so we focus our efforts here, in our ‘Everyday Relationships’ like families, lovers, friends and neighbors. But the ‘strangers’ and greater community members who may cross our paths may also be our ‘Everyday Relationships’. Afterall, I was going about my very mundane, daily business when suddenly confronted with this situation. I didn’t know any of these people. But they were close to my home, on a road I travel everyday, from a surf school in a neighboring village… and they needed help.
Perhaps, though, the most clear example of Claiming Each Other to come out of this scenario was my exchanges with the owners of the surf company and hostel. Overhearing him yelling at his employee, reaching out to him to call him back in for support, his wife stepping in, coordinating with her, she thanking me later.
I sat down the next day, found their information online and wrote a long email to both of them during my lunch break. I began by reintroducing myself and sending my best wishes that everyone was recovering well and feeling supported by one another. I specifically gave the male owner the benefit of the doubt, explaining that I understand very well that we humans don’t always act our best or in helpful ways when suddenly confronted with a very stressful situation. And I thanked the wife for providing more of what was really needed in that situation. And finally, as an act of after-care and neighborly kindness, I offered several detailed suggestions to them based on my training and experiences at the accident site that may help them create a more relationally and operationally resilient company culture.
The suggestions included emergency protocols, basic training for all staff, inclusion of first aid kits and of course, explicit understanding that upper level staff would always prioritize emergency or serious situations and show up to help. The very first suggestion, however, was to make things right with their young male driver. To offer their apology for not supporting him in a timely way, for dismissing their responsibilities and putting them on him and for making him feel responsible and alone in a time of distress. I suggested they keep checking on him in the coming days, (and the rest of them!), letting him know they care, and to consider offering him a paid day off to rest, to cook him dinner and hang out with him to hear his story if he felt like sharing it and to offer to connect him with more support if he wanted.
I let them know that my husband and I have been small business owners for over a decade now. I gave them the benefit of the doubt that they cared for their employees and clients wellbeing, like we do, and that sometimes, we just need some help getting back in alignment with ourselves when things get intense. This is Claiming Each Other, too. Me claiming them as fellow community members and offering what I could to contribute to more resiliency for their business and their relations. Even though I don’t know them, I can feel clearly inside of me the peace of mind I receive knowing that maybe they would all learn from this, and that next time, (knock on wood), they would all be more prepared.
Maybe it would be me on the side of the road next time. Or someone I love and care about. Maybe it would be one of their own family members or friends. Wouldn’t they hope someone would stop and help if they could? Wouldn’t they want the responsible parties to step up and help out? Isn’t it just a bit more comforting to think that more of us could be a bit more prepared and willing to help each other when we really need it?
We/They were ‘lucky’ this time, clearly. I’m very grateful for that. And, we can all learn a lot from what happened and how we might improve our response-ability. First thing I did when I left the scene was drive straight to town and put together two first-aid kits, one for my car and one for my husband’s. If you do this, make sure you know how to use what you put in there. I’m also in the process of renewing my first-aid certification. I’ve taken maybe 6 CPR-First Aid certification courses in my lifetime, but it's been a while and protocols are always being updated as responders learn from their experiences.
I have also been thanked again over text and invited out by the wife of the school. I’m thinking of taking her up on it. Still no word from the man.
For now, I hope that this writing I've done serves as informative and inspirational. Maybe you’ll put together a first aid kit. Maybe you’ll take a CPR-First Aid Course. Maybe you’ll join us for the Spring training of Claiming Each Other. Or maybe you’ll rest just a little better remembering that the world is not all bad. That there are people ready and willing to help each other. To Claim Each Other as kin… as we are… especially when things get tough.
I love you all. A lot.
Lorie