To think I'm NOT allowed to punch members of the public unconcious no matter what my company tells me?

[WhoTheFuckIsSimon]

company is an nhs hospital

Annual study day today and of all the bollocks ive ever heard I reckon this takes the biscuit.

According to the fire officer on this formal study day if there's a fire and someone is refusing to evacuate "as an nhs employee you are allowed to punch them unconcious and then drag them out"

He wasn't joking, not at all.

Questioning colleagues later on its something he's said to other groups on other days.

I really don't think he's right. Surely even a police officer can't punch someone unconcious? What happened to informed choice! People are allowed to make stupid decisions if they want.

What if I do an unlucky punch and kill someone with one punch? What if I struggle to knock them out? Do I just keep battering them?

And most importantly dragging uncooperative people out of burning buildings is surely going to slow down my own escape!

There's rather an interesting case in criminal law about a sailor who punched someone during an evacuation of a sinking ship because he had frozen on the ladder and no-one could get off the boat. The bloke fell into the sea and drowned. No charges brought despite it basically being murder

This is making me laugh so much
DS is a fire officer for the police station she works at and had been told she can report the non evacuated to the chief constable to be arrested

Do you think he's quite junior and some of his more senior colleagues are seeing how gullible he is? I wonder if he's regularly sent off of for a long wait? Or a tin of tartan paint?

Not sure about Cheryl, but that Janet is a right bitch and deserves everything she gets.

Or a glass hammer? A skirting ladder?

This thread is so funny. DH is thrilled. He often does out of hours NHS work and some of the patients are major cunts. He's just going to shout "FIRE" and punch them now.

It's really cheered him up and he's wondering if the same arguably applies to private patients too....

Did he say you were 'allowed to' or ' encouraged to'? Did he mention using a fire extinguisher as a subdueing aid? Just wondering out loud of course...

(is anyone else remembering that scene from airplane when they queue with baseball bats to 'calm' the hysterical passenger ? )

Huh? That's not murder WyldChyld you can't be serious?

That's not murder "wyld". That would be manslaughter at worst

Was the fire officer's name Keith Lard ?

Ahahaha! I was just about to say that .

Fire officers are a bit of an odd bunch, I've come across a few Keith Lards in my time...

He started do off saying you were allowed to and then he said "it's important you understand you should punch someone till they're unconcious"

He was very serious about it.

From the depths of a decade or so ago - my NHS fire training consisted of learning where the fire cells in my dept were and how long the various sets of doors would resist the flames. We moved patients into the next fire cell, shut the doors and waited for the fire brigade, no mention of being able to punch people. Then again all my patients are unconscious already :)

Punching someone unconscious is extremely difficult. It can be taught, as can techniques involving pressure points which can subdue someone fairly quickly. I don't think that an NHS hospital should be training their staff in this sort of thing, seriously. For what it's worth I have a pretty decent punch (comes of years of karate training) and I wouldn't risk using it.

I didn't get the Keith Lard reference. Just googled it. I thought when his name was first mentioned that someone had a fire officer with that name giving similar advice.

Duh! Don't watch Peter Kay.

Why do they have to be unconscious? What if you punch them once and they say "OK. OK. I'm
coming!" You're to keep punching them until they're unconscious?!

I think so Gobbolino.

Well I hope after your fire training you went straight into health and safety training as you do need to make sure you don't put your back out when dragging all these punched people out of the hospital

The worst thing is that colleagues of mine have been told the same over the last few months and not one of them thought it was odd advice!

Funnily enough there was no manual handling training. Double infection control session though.

When I worked in an acute hospital (20 years ago) the bed bound were not evacuated.the fire doors were supposed to hold back the fire and smoke long enough for the fire to be tackled.
There is a fine line between punching someone unconcious and killing them.The trainer was kidding .It is clearly his stock 'joke' or he is rather dim and someone has pulled his leg.

I swear he wasn't joking. If he was no one realised.

Funnily enough there was no manual handling training

Cripes, how are you going to drag all the unconscious punchees outside if you haven't done manual handling?

I work with adults with acute learning disabilities. Most of them have mental capacity to make their own decision, even if they are 'unwise'.

When I did fire training recently we were told if someone won't evacuate leave them in a place of safety (relatively, i.e behind a fire door) and notify the fire service where they are. We were ultimately told that in a life or death situation you should save yourself, not put yourself in greater danger trying to save someone who won't cooperate. It's more use for you to get out and tell the fire brigade where in the building they are than for two people to be overcome by smoke but no one know where they are.

rino I think that people take more risks to save children than adults. A thirteen year old with learning difficulties is different to an adult with learning difficulties. It would be next to impossible to reason with a frightened teenager with autism.

Probably about as difficult as it is to reason with an adult with autism I would have thought?

I am sure you are right. The reason that a child is not left in a burning building is more to do with the fact that they are a child. The fact that such a fictious child had autism is irreverent. I am sure the paediatric ward would not abandon or punch a stubborn child who refused to get out in a fire.

I assume that hospitals have a major incident plan in the event of fire. I imagine that a big challenge is that hospitals have a more transient population than a school. In a school staff know which children are likely to be stressed and can plan. Hospitals do not usually have the luxury of knowing its patients quite so well.

My son's primary did have a real fire. The police turned up as well as fire brigade. I assume that a hospital fire would have police support. The police certainly have the training to forcibly remove someone from a building.