Jennie Asks:

What happens when someone gets burned? What do the EMT’s do on the scene? The story line involves the explosion of a crosswired electrical box.  Two individuals are burned.

First, the man who threw the switch is thrown onto the floor and sparks are showering down on him and his clothes.  He is pinned beneath a shelf that he knocked over.  The second man takes his jacket and tries to put out the flames while others pull the shelf off the man on the floor.  The second man’s arm and hand are burned trying to put out the fire, and keep the sparks from falling on the man on the floor.

I have the paramedics taking the first man to the hospital. I describe very little about his condition. However, the hero is attended by the heroine who is an EMT. His burns are secondary. Would he have to go to the hospital?  Get a tetanus shot if he needs one?

Jordyn Says:

The first distinction to make is that there are several different types of Emergency Medical Service (EMS) providers and their level of responsibility to this patient will be different. An emergency medical technician (EMT) generally provides basic first aid, CPR, can administer oxygen and can assist the patient in giving some of their own medications (like an asthma inhaler or nitroglycerin tablets.) A paramedic does more advanced medical procedures and gives drugs. The level of your provider will need to be clear in the medical care they can provide.

For EMT’s, in general, burn care is as follows:

1. Remove clothing from the burn that is non-adherent.

2. Remove any constricting items. For instance, if the burn is on the ring finger, you would try and take the ring off.

3. Cover burn with a cool, wet, clean dressing. This will help control pain.

If you have a paramedic responding— it is possible that an IV could be started and the patient could get an IV narcotic for pain (something like morphine or fentanyl.)

If the character is burned by the electrical current, this poses a whole new set of problems. I get the feeling he is burned by the electricity because you mention that he has been thrown back. Electrical burns typically have an entrance and an exit wound like the hand and foot. The electricity enters one part but has to exit somewhere.

The other problem with electrical burns is that your heart pumps based on an electrical conduction system. An electrical burn can injure the electrical conduction system of the heart and we will look very closely at whether or not the heart sustained injury. This could be evaluated initially by a 12-Lead ECG and lab work that measures muscle breakdown specific to the heart. The issue with electrical burns is that the damage is often unseen because the electricity will injure you internally but we can’t see it externally except and the entrance and exit sites.

The other thought was the extent of your patient’s burns and this would make a difference in their medical care. Burns are generally calculated based on the percentage of skin that is affected. You can find examples of these tables by clicking this link. Adults and kids are calculated differently.

Burns <15% body surface area (BSA) would get cool, moist compresses. However, burns > 15% would get dry, sterile dressings. The reason for this is that burn patients have lost their skin integrity. Your skin helps your body maintain its temperature. Some consider it the largest organ in the body. When you burn >15% and apply cool, wet dressings, this can pull enough heat away from the patient to cause them to become hypothermic. We actually have to help burn patients maintain their body temperature by cranking up the heat in the room or using other warming techniques.

Your patient will have to go to the hospital. Initial ED treatment would be IV placement, fluid resuscitation (there is a formula we use for this and is dependent on the burn percentage), pain medication (like morphine), and likely consulting with a burn center to help determine his course of treatment. Tetanus shot would be updated if he hasn’t had one in the last five years.

Did you know that paramedic protocols are relatively easy to find online? For instance, this link shows all of the Denver Metro Prehospital Protocols. Referencing these will be one of the best sources for researching what type of prehospital care your character would receive for their given ailment.

***This content originally posted December 10, 2010.***