I wrote a letter that I will not send because I realise it's too long and emotionally charged. It goes like this:
Hi xxxxx, xxxxx and xxxxx
Happy New Year!
At the start of this New Year I wanted to mention First Aid Training. www.savelivesatwork.co.uk/new-regulations because I am concerned mainly for xxxxx, but for all of you too.
On a personal level:
During the Christmas period, a friend of mine with end stage lung disease was taken to hospital by ambulance. When she arrived, she found that xx hospital in xxxxxtown was full and diverting their patients to xxxxxotherhospital. As a result, she spent NINE hours in an ambulance in the car park before she could even get inside the building. The newspapers are not reporting how bad the problems with the NHS are because it's being hushed up. It could be the person closest to you whose life you save, or maybe prevent an existing health problem becoming fatal. If there isn't already a personnel file with employee's health needs and emergency contacts/ info to tell emergency services, please can you do one. Even if an ambulance needs to be called, it can take four hours and people are dying because of the delay.
When xxxxx had his hand accident at work a year or two ago, he was in shock and drove to hospital without me knowing. I was really worried because he didn't return from work at the usual time and (didn't have his mobile phone so I couldn't find out where he was anyway) Probably he "should" have told someone how bad it was, but if the people around him had been aware of accident proceedures and the symptoms of shock, they could have driven him or helped. All sorts of things could have gone wrong on the way. I'm glad he's fine, but obviously some sort of proceedure needs to be in place when someone is injured.
On a business level: Not having trained first aiders is downright dangerous and opens up the risk of serious injury, death and all kinds of other problems, like not being a certified safe working area and more problems, that you can probably imagine. Personally as an employed, I'd be terrified not to have trained first aiders, for all kinds of reasons. I really don't mean to offend anyone, so I hope you will forgive me, but obviously xxxxx is my main concern and if you have already booked one then please disregard what I've said.
Please , please get a first aid course booked asap. If you're too busy or need help sourcing some reasonable ones, I'm happy to help.
Best wishes,
xxxx(myname)
This has been making my blood boil for a long time. The employer is tight with money and goes mad every time they try to book a first aid course because he says it's "too expensive". IDK what to do, but I'm really worried because my husband has a rare lung disease and I don't think they even have files on the employees health needs, emergency contacts or accident proceedures in place. It seems that noone has the time to sort this or the balls to tell the boss it's unacceptable. WTF do I/we do about this??