An emergency is a dangerous situation which calls for immediate action and anything which poses a threat to security, property, and environment needs to be handled well. Often people panic at the sight of emergency and feel that they are inadequately trained to handle the situation which can be right in some cases, but mostly it just takes the presence of mind and the thought that 'I should save myself' that can help the person handle an emergency well.
Although emergencies require us to make split-second decisions, it is totally possible to take our time and calculate our approach so that we don’t regret the way we acted and lose more because of our own actions when only the emergency would cost us less or maybe nothing. You can easily freeze in an emergency as your mind goes into a state of arrest and renders you incapable of performing any action.
#1. Adjust Your Behavior
In order to be calm, you must deliberately adjust your behavior and soak up all the pressure. It takes a lot of courage and mental fortitude to soak up the pressure, and a lot of people cannot do it. In an emergency, it is very important that you remain calm and realize that even though the situation is bad it will take time to be worse and if you act with thought and care, you can stop it from becoming worse and change it from bad to good. If you feel like you cannot handle it, you must take a deep breath and reassure yourself. In an emergency, it is very difficult not to be emotional but what you need to remember is that responding out of emotion will be catastrophic as only rational thinking is your best aid in times of emergency.
#2. Call Emergency Services
Sometimes it happens that in times of an emergency, we are too helpless to save ourselves and this makes us feel desolate and can convince us of true emptiness where the hope we felt initially turns bleak. Self-reliance is good for one’s self-esteem, but it should not make us egotistical to the point where we refuse to come down from our high horse and feel that if we cannot do this for ourselves, no one do it for us. People who become too arrogant for help often try to deal with the situation by themselves even when the wisdom is awakened that they cannot as they suppress it with their ego. You should always call emergency services and have it on speed dial in your phone as you never know when an emergency can strike so make you tell them your location and the nature of the emergency. It could be that you are a smoker and there has been a gas leak at the house so what you need to do is call the gas agency to fix the leak before you light smoke and not tinker with it yourself as you are not the expert on this. Other than this it could be that your family member has a contagious disease and you are too attached to them and want to go near them to treat them but you need to call a professional who tends to them instead of risking your health.
#3. Take Into Account the Nature of the Emergency
Before you panic, take a deep breath and ascertain what the nature of the emergency is? Is someone hurt or has there been damage to property? Is anyone trapped in the building which is on fire? You need to see things for what they are as you can easily distort the truth by exaggerating your emotions so taken into account to the nature of the emergency and then act accordingly. If someone has caught fire and are suffering from first-degree burns, wrap them in something to stop them from burning and call the hospital after you do that. Another example would be to call the fire department first to douse a fire that is burning up the house before going in. These are all controlled reactions after taking into account the nature of the situation so make sure you see and calculate before you react.
#4. Prepare In Advance
You can easily emergency-proof your house if you learn a lot about the kind of potential emergencies which can occur day to day. Any situation can change rapidly and even the day which seems dull till now can become chaotic if an emergency strikes. Check your surroundings and see if you have any barrel of oil or another chemical stored in your house that can cause chemical spills or combustible material which can cause fires. Make sure there are no broken water pipes as, during electrical outages, they can short-circuit the entire house. Learning how to prepare for natural disasters such as floods or fires will equip you on how to deal with the situation in a better way.
#5. Participate in Mock Drills
Nowadays in schools and offices, it is compulsory to conduct a mock drill for the safety of students and employees in order to better prepare them for specific situations. One of the most common mock drills is how to evacuate a building when a fire or an earthquake strikes as people can panic and run haphazardly creating the same scenes of a human stampede. Other mock drills include how to use a first aid kit and how to avoid common nursing errors while treating specific injuries so that you don’t aggravate the injury of a person or your own when you are in pain.
#6. Learn CPR
Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation is a technique which can help you save someone’s life as it provides training for treating someone who is having a heart attack. If you haven't taken a CPR course, you can still offer chest compressions for someone suspected of having a heart attack. You need to place your hands on the person’s ribcage and then apply pressure at the speed of one compression per second, and this can easily make the difference as it can keep a person who otherwise would be dead alive till the hospital unit arrives.
#7. Talk To the One Who Is Afflicted
Sometimes we take actions without talking to the person who is in pain and make the situation worse than it is. There is nothing wrong with the intent to help, but even intent needs direction when it comes to improving the current situation. When you speak to the one who is suffering because of the situation, you learn how it all unraveled and how active are the dangerous elements right now instead of just relying on your own guesswork and deductions which you made with incomplete information. No one can tell you better about the situation other than the person who is afflicted.
#8. Calm Down the Aggressor
Sometimes emergencies are caused by people who have lost their faith in the goodness of life or have taken to hurting other people because they feel aggrieved themselves. In such a situation you need to speak to them and convince them that what they are doing is wrong. You may see them wielding a knife or holding a gun threatening to cause mayhem and violence when they are seething with the emotional turmoil that they find too difficult to deal with. What you can do is approach the situation with words instead of fear and help the aggressor foresee what all will be damaged and destroyed if he pulls the trigger.
Tells us how you act in emergencies. Drop comments in the comments section below.
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Very informative post! Thanks for sharing helpful information.