4 Ways to Reduce Hesitation In Emergencies
Hesitation during an emergency is a common and dangerous response.
Our sympathetic nervous system is responsible for our fight, flight, or freeze response to a highly stressful event and a lack of confidence can cause bystanders to become trapped in a loop of indecision.
Caught by surprise it’s understandable that most people don’t know what to do if they haven’t been trained or prepared in some way mentally to handle the situation.
This lack of experience and\or preparation provides no avenues of problem solving and effectively turns the brain off, removing any hopes of critical thinking or problem solving.
Here’s a few tricks I learned the hard way that helps me prepare for an unexpected emergency:
- Let Yourself Be the Hero
Visualization of success is a well-known method highly successful people use to handle any curve ball thrown at them in the game of life. This is an excellent way to prepare yourself physically and mentally to handle an emergency with the grace of a seasoned firefighter.
Do NOT see yourself falling apart, freezing, or failing in anyway. Why set yourself up for failure before even being allowed to try?
See yourself winning and you will.
- Scenario Rehearsal
Think of the most likely scenarios, then rehearse what your response will be, the actions you will take, and how you will handle unanticipated problems. Stop yourself a few times a day and think about where you are at that very moment.
Play a game with yourself. Ask:
What types of emergent injuries might you encounter right there?
What’s your first step in providing life saving care to that person.
What would you do second?
Third?
- Get Geared
Emergencies are dangerous partly because of a lack of available resources. If we had everything we needed at our disposal, we’d be in a hospital with a full staff of trauma doctors and nurses.
But we are more likely to experience our emergencies on some dark and rainy back road where we are limited to only what we have prepared. Saving lives is much easier if you have the right gear. Yes, being able to improvise your own gear in an emergency is an important skill to have but should be avoided until absolutely necessary.
Gear you know is trustworthy and not cobbled together with dubious materials in Chinese sweatshops.
- Get Trained
The reason for most hesitation in an emergency is not knowing what to do. If you’ve never thought about what it’s like to witness a sever injury, you aren’t likely to act when it happens right in front of you.
Most people don’t know what to do and this terrifies them into further inaction.
The solution is simple: Learn what to do so you will be able to act when you need to.
Basic trauma medicine is so simple to learn, and easy to retain that this is easily accomplished with only a small time investment. Mountain Man Medical believes in everyone having access to quality life saving medical equipment and the knowledge of how to use it. It doesn’t do us any good to sell a product the customer doesn’t know how to use properly.
This is why we created the Emergency Trauma Response Course. This course is completely free and online for your convince. This course is a series of videos that demonstrate the proper philosophies and skills of basic bleeding control and civilian emergency management