Primary assessment: DRSABCD

The DRSABCD is a primary assessment tool that assists you in assessing the emergency scene, ensuring safety, identifying where help is needed the most and identifying and managing immediately life-threatening conditions. In the following sections we provide you with...

Treat serious conditions first

If your patient has multiple medical emergencies, or you have multiple patients in an emergency situation, you need to make a decision on what or who to treat first. This can be difficult, especially in a stressful emergency situation. The most serious conditions are...

Responsiveness

Once you have ensured the situation is safe, you need to assess whether the patient is responsive. Assess the collapsed person’s response to verbal and tactile stimuli (‘talk and touch’), ensuring that this does not cause or aggravate any injury. This may...

Breathing, bleeding, burns and breaks

With any scenario you come across as a first aider there may be several problems occurring at the same time, and each problem may lead to another problem or a worsening state for the patient. Combined problems can lead to a complex situation where you must decide what...

Send for help

What help is already available? Firstly, think about people nearby, for example, bystanders, who could help you right now. In most emergency situations there is a lot to do so others can help you deal with the emergency. They can help you manage dangers, send for...