A fall from a height is classified as one of the most common causes of serious or fatal accidents at work. Work at height itself is classified as particularly dangerous work, requiring exceptional precautions and the use of specialized OHS equipment ensuring a certain degree of employee safety. The most common work of this type includes work on scaffolding, building structures, ceilings or ladders, and although few people are aware of it, work at height is considered to be any work performed at least 1 meter above ground level or floor. However, the issue of securing workplaces is only part of the health and safety associated with work at height – employees should also be familiar with the principles of first aid in the event of an accident.

The basic action to be performed after noticing the victim of a fall from a height is to determine whether the victim is conscious and whether there is contact with him and call for help. If the person is conscious, it is worth finding out what happened and passing this information to paramedics when calling for help – due to the high risk of spinal damage, reaction time will be extremely important here. When checking whether the victim is conscious, it is necessary to make sure that he can move his limbs and whether he has sensation in them – even if the injured person does not feel pain, he should not be allowed to get up from his place until help arrives.

If the victim is conscious but cannot move his limbs and has no feeling in them, the chance that he has suffered a spinal injury is very high. In this case, the first rule to be careful – the injured person cannot be moved abruptly, he should not be moved or placed in a lateral fixed position. If the place where the fall occurred poses a threat to both the victim and the people helping him, the only way to move it in case of suspected spinal injury is to use a stretcher and place the person on his back – even broken boards or doors can be used as part of the stretcher, as long as they are able to fit the entire body of the victim.

Loss of consciousness after a fall from a height happens really often with the loss of consciousness by the victim. If a person does not respond to a call or gentle patting, it should first be determined whether he is breathing and whether he has preserved blood circulation. The very checking of breathing and heart rate is carried out here similarly to standard first aid. If the victim is breathing, you can proceed to check the first signs of spinal injury, if not, lay the victim on a hard ground and proceed to resuscitation.

If we find the victim suspected of spinal injury – the visible unnatural bending of the body, the way the person fell or the ground on which he landed can inform us about the injury, after first aid you should call an ambulance and pass your suspicions about the spinal injury. The dispatching staff should ask for additional information about the accident and, if necessary, direct the person responsible for providing assistance on site about the necessary activities to be carried out before the arrival of the ambulance. It should be remembered that proper handling of the injured person until the arrival of the ambulance will help protect him from the effects of bone fragments moving and increasing spinal cord injuries.

After determining the general condition of the victim and calling an ambulance, you should first of all stay with the person and not allow him to change his position. It is worth checking for haemorrhage and, if necessary, securing it by strongly pressing the bleeding area or applying a tourniquet above the bleeding site. In the case of suspected spinal injury in the cervical spine, it is also worth looking for ways to create a makeshift protective collar. For this purpose, you can use a blanket or items of clothing, trying to make the collar relatively stiff and allow you to immobilize your head. The injured person should also be protected against hypothermia by using a thermal blanket and secure the accident site until the ambulance arrives.

No fall from a height in the work environment should be underestimated. Even a seemingly harmless fall can cause serious spinal injuries or injuries of internal organs invisible to the naked eye. Quick first aid and calling an ambulance can save not only health and fitness, but also the life of the victim.

Source: https://www.bhp-gabi.pl/a101,pierwsza-pomoc-po-upadku-z-wysokosci.html

Supported by Norway through Norway Grants 2014-2021, in the frame of the Programme “Social Dialogue – Decent Work”.