Originally Posted by
CKA1
Hi,
I'm taking a first aid course, in fact I finish it tonight. We were taught that in a First Aid kit, you should not have OTC medication. Imagine being at a workplace (which for the Flight Attendant is on a plane in flight) and giving somebody a Tylenol or Aspirin and they turn out to be allergic. They die.
Now, imagine the family of the person who died. They're going to want (A) answers, (B) money and (C) potentially criminal charges.
I would imagine the airlines have insurance to cover this. I do in my personal business and when I graduate from school I will likely be covered by whoever I work for. But that doesn't mean I can't be sued for gross negligence.
In Alberta they call it the Good Samaritans rule. You cannot be held criminally liable for doing your best. That's why people who perform first aid in good faith are not liable. A first aider is legally obligated (in Alberta) to not provide or administer any substance which could be considered a OTC or prescription drug. It's called different things in different jurisdictions, but across Canada, except Quebec it's a similar idea.
Prescribing drugs or administering drugs are for your doctor and hospital staff. If somebody dies at the hospital, it's one thing. But if you die on an airplane because you reacted badly to something the FA decided to give you, I bet the FA and airline would be entirely at fault.
Chuck
As I understand it, a flight first aid kit has items that only paramedics, doctors or those otherwise authorized to use them in (aside from band aids etc that the FA can dole out.) A doctor on board (or in some cases, via a radio link) can instruct items to be used (my doctor friend was called upon on a long flight to deal with a medical emergency and had access to several drugs she needed to sustain life). It is a very different situation to an office first aid kit, where emergency life support is a short distance away (911 etc.).
I was trained in combat first aid, which is again a very different ball game to office first aid, and our first aid kits included, among other things, morphine single dose syringes (a bit like epi pens) which we were all trained to administer. We also learnt how to reinflate a lung, tube an airway, deal with abdominal organs that have left the abdominal cavity, and other gross things I hope I never have to do. Whilst I am never going to take a razor blade and tube to a stranger's throat should they no longer have a viable airway, I would certainly give it a go on a friend or relative if needed (the alternative being that they would die).
There are two types of first aid in my mind - what you do to help strangers, and what you do to help a close friend or loved one.