Article Text
Abstract
Introduction Accidents and acute medical events at workplaces are unfortunately not rare events – ILO estimates that 313 million people are injured and 350.000 are killed in work related accidents annually1.Besides risk assessment and safety measures to reduce the number of incidents every company has to develop specific emergency plans to support and treat injured and critically ill employees as the worksite, which has to include First Aid as starting point for the ‘Chain of survival’.
1 IOCH Newsletter Volume 13, Nr. 2,3. – page 1: Message from the new ICOH president Jukka Takala.
Methods In an electronic survey which was sent out to international Red Cross/Red Crescent colleagues and Occupational health specialists interesting insight in the global provision of First Aid at workplaces and especially on cardiac arrest could be gained.
Result More than 100 answers from different part of the world demonstrate that in ¾ of the country’s First Aid is legally required and in about 70% risk assessments define the number of trained First Aiders. Emergency medical drills in companies are only mandatory in 50% of the countries.
The fact that in 40% of the answers the average responding time of an EMS is more than 30 min in rural areas and 30% up to 20 in urban zones gives a clear mandate to improve the training of First Aid and numbers of First Aid trainers.
Discussion Some best practices and ideas on how to improve the quality of training First Aiders and other health care provider will be discussed.