Fractures and Dislocations

Dislocation is where the joint comes apart. This could be with the fingers. It could be on the shoulder. A fracture can be a crack in the bone, and then you can have a full broken bone, and this can be a break straight through. It might be that the bone has broken and it stays within the arm. It might be it shot through the skin, and then we could deal with serious bleeds. And then we can have complicated breaks where nerve damage is done as well. Now if the bone has come through and there is bleeding, we also need to treat it for bleeding. However, in this scenario, someone's fallen down and landed very hard on their wrist or arm and potentially what could've happened here is that the joint has been broken.

Now in most cases like this, this is quite a common thing that could happen within a martial art setting or any sports setting. Someone falls down on their hand and it starts to swell. It's extremely painful. Now we would always to treat it as if it is broken. It may be that it's not broken, but if a joint is broken, the more movement then the more pain and the more discomfort, and also more soft tissue damage is done. What we need to do, is to approach to start with, introduce ourselves, and just find out what's happened. Have a look at it. It might be quite obvious. It might be a lot of swelling very, very quickly. What we need do is immobilise the joint. Now if it's something like an arm, then quite an easy way of immobilising would just to be to roll a magazine up. If you roll a magazine up and put it over the arm and then just tape in place, it acts as a splint. It's not ideal, but as the arm then swells up we can also cut the tape and allow the arm to swell more or adjust it.

We can also put the arm in a sling. The important thing when you're putting the arm in the splint, and the sling, is to make sure you cover it right the way down so that there is no movement in the arm. If we just cover it to here, then there could be a movement which will then cause more and more pain. We're just trying to immobilise the joint. Now once someone's fallen and broken their arm, we need to get them to emergency services, so transport them or call the emergency services so we can get the limb treated. If someone's fallen over and broken their leg, then there is not a lot we can do. We just must call emergency services. We're treating them in the position we found them. Immobilise it the best we can, try and avoid any movement, and make it more comfortable for them to sit.