Incidences and emergencies
In health and social care there are a lot of procedures and precautions put into place so that accidents don’t occur, but no matter how careful organisations are with these kind of incidents there is no way really of preventing them. In health and social care a lot of risk assessments are taken to make sure the place is safe but obviously there is still a few things that are unstable or accidents like this wouldn’t occur. The staff’s duty then is to work out what happened and how to minimise the risk of it happening again. An emergency is often unexpected, not planned, dangerous and sometimes life threatening. Some incidents that can occur include: fire’s, flood’s, exposure to infection, exposure to chemicals, intruders, aggressive and dangerous encounters and abuse – I will be talking about 2 of these, the concerns about them and justify them.
Fire in a hospital

Fire can be a very dangerous occurrence and is very unpredictable; this is why it may cause panic in the hospital. The first step in when a fire is happening is too let everyone in the building know what is going on, this is simply done by raising the fire alarm for everyone to hear. Then you must inform the telephonist by ringing 2222, this will direct you straight to the switchboard, you then need to tell them where you are and what’s the emergency. As soon as you inform 2222 about the fire a nominated fire warden needs to go out and meet the fire engine. Although it may cause panic you must start evacuating the building, but you must not leave the building because you are not to prioritise yourself better than service users, your duty of care is to look after the service users therefore you must help people who are less able than you for example, disabled, small children, restricted mobility, hearing/visual impairments and the elderly. Removing the service users could be a difficult task because many may be restricted from mobility. The first people to take out in the act of a fire are people that can walk and don’t have mobility issues. Once you’ve evacuated those people you must attack the fire if it’s safe to do so. This means keep the fire exit behind you and use an appropriate fire extinguisher or a fire blanket. This will allow you to have an extra 20/30 minutes to get the others who need support to get out next. Then all the service users and yourself must meet at the fire assembly point that is far away from the fire meaning outside. You must not return to the building until the fire brigade has safely and permanently put out the fire in the setting.
You need to make sure that all those instructions are put in place when a fire has occurred. It’s important to raise the alarm to make sure that every service user in the hospital knows which area the fire is so they can start carrying out the other precautions. You must inform 2222 so that the fire brigade is aware of the fire; if this isn’t done then the fire could spread more quickly due to no fire brigade there to put it out. This means you are putting yourself and the other service users at more risk of danger. Thirdly you must assess you own safety otherwise you could cause yourself serious or minor harm if you don’t take it into consideration. You must also make sure you assess the safety of the service users because otherwise someone might get really hurt. Next you must evacuate the service users out of the building. If this is not done then you could slow down the process or the fire being put out quickly therefor someone may be hurt while in your care. By attacking the fire with a fire extinguisher you are helping the service users and yourself with extra time to get out the building, if this isn’t done then more harm would occur putting the service users at risk of injury. Lastly you must go to the fire assembly point to ensure that everyone is safe, if this isn’t done then harm can be caused for the people who are not at the assembly point. Once you are there no one