Now in this situation, we've got about a six year old child who has fallen off from the slide,
she was climbing up to the top of the slide,
and she has some pain in her forearm.
If there was blood or body fluid, we'd want to make sure to put on our personal protective equipment.
We're checking this child out.
And remember, we need to, as an adult rescuer, we need to really approach this child from the aspect of a child.
They're scared, they're hurt, they're not sure what to do.
"Are you alright honey, were you sliding, and you hurt your arm?"
"Okay, well, we're gonna take good care of it, okay?"
So the biggest thing here, on a potential fracture, is to check for other serious illness or injuries first.
What caused the fall off the slide?
Was she actually starting to go dizzy, or faint, before she fell off the slide?
Or did she just trip because she was playing?
So we're going to go from head-to-toe here to check for other not-so-obvious injuries.
"Did you hit your head at all?"
"Does your neck hurt at all?"
"How about your back, does your back hurt?"
"No?"
"Can you move your right hand, this hand here?"
"How about your toes, can you wiggle your toes?"
"So you don't hurt anywhere else, just your arm?"
"Okay, good."
So, we're pretty confident that the only injury here is probably her arm,
and now we're going to try to make sure we stabilize it.
But before we do that, I'm checking to see if she has any deformity.
Deformity of the potentially fractured area means that at any time it could become a compound fracture,
which means it could point out of the skin or break the skin.
Cause infectious problems with that.
But also bleeding issues, and bone fragments, and other nerve injury involvement and things like that.
In this case, it all seems pretty straight, and it just looks like it might be red and kind of swelling.
So we're going to apply the normal treatment for any kind of musculoskeletal injury, and that's rice.
Rest, Ice.
We're going to use some type of pressure dressing around some kind of a splint.
Sometimes that's looked at as "Compression."
Some curriculums are starting to say that's "Cold."
Well, that's what the ice was for.
E is for "Elevation," once with have this fracture stabilized.
And then we're going to take them to the doctor's office, and make sure that they get treated.
So we're going to go ahead and make sure that this child self-splints their arm.
"Go ahead and take your other hand, honey, and hold your arm so it doesn't move."
"And I'm gonna get some equipment so we can put a little splint together for you."
We're gonna carefully place this arm in the splint.
And then we get our wrap.
Remember that when you wrap any kind of extremity, you always start at what we call the distal end,
or the far end of the extremity, and we wrap towards the body of the patient,
making sure to not trap excess fluids and blood in the distal or the end of the extremity.
Being careful not to excessively move this arm.
Again, remember that this splinting is really just temporary, to try to help stabilize the fracture or the potential fracture point.
"I'm going to let you just put that there, next to your body."
And what I like to do here is kind of secure this arm around the patient's body,
to help them hold it.
So we're going to bring that arm up, and I'm going to continue to wrap around the patient to help them hold it while we travel
to the doctor, or to the emergency room.
And that just kinda gives extra support,
so that the patient can rest.
They've been through quite a bit.
"How's that feel?"
"Still hurt bad?"
"Not too bad?"
And then I'm going to pinch the nail beds, on the distal ends of the fingertips,
to make sure that we've not cut off any circulation.
But with half-splinting, it's really nice, because we don't get into that accidental tourniquet with wrapping too tightly.
We've immobilized the joint above and below the suspected fracture area.
Checking to make sure that we've got good capillary refill to know that the circulation has not been obstructed at all.
And now we're ready to continue on either to the hospital or the doctor's office,
and check this out with some x-rays to see if we actually have a fracture, or maybe it's just a bad bruise.