As well as lone worker solutions, we’re also passionate about remote worker safety. So, with that hat on, we took particular interest in the abstract in a paper shared by Chris Peace during an NZISM webinar. Chris is a lecturer in Occupational Health and Safety at Victoria University, and we thank him for his permission to share the paper with you.
The article is behind a paywall: Kool, B. et al (2021). Potential survivability of prehospital injury deaths in New Zealand: a cross-sectional study. Injury Prevention, 27(3), 245. Chris brought the following section to our attention, and given what we do at Guardian Angel Security, it resonated with us:
“In New Zealand, the majority of injured people who die before reaching hospital do so from non-survivable injuries. More than one third have either survivable or potentially survivable injuries, suggesting an increased need for appropriate bystander first aid, timeliness of EMS care and access to advanced-level hospital care.”
This confirms what we have been saying for a long time. When it comes to remote worker safety, being able to raise an SOS from anywhere and activate a timely response is crucial to the chances of surviving serious injuries. The great tragedy is that too many New Zealanders die from injuries they would normally survive: what kills them is they weren’t treated in time.
The authors of the paper also wrote “Factors associated with not being immediately found in this study included: RTCs in remote areas which may have resulted in the vehicle not being visible from the road or no cell phone coverage; events happening in remote areas such as mountains; and being alone at the time of injury and not being able to call for help. The latter issue can be addressed by the use of personal panic pendants for workers working alone or in remote locations. These devices offer functions including a ‘buddy’ or check-in system, tracking and panic buttons, thus providing the potential to limit the survivability of an injury situation by providing immediate contact and thereby facilitating a potentially quicker EMS response time.”
Such devices and solutions, as provided by us, are both practical and affordable, so there can be no excuses. It should be possible to send an SOS from anywhere and set off a chain of events that culminates in a prompt response and life-saving treatment. We also know from experience that workers in possession of a hands-free, two-way voice device with an operator listening and dispatching help to the exact location report a feeling of calm in dealing with the situation at hand.
Time is of the essence in any crisis. It can be the difference between life and death. We have the devices that allow an alarm to be raised from anywhere, and a speedy response to occur as a result. To find out more about our life-saving solutions and hardware, please get in touch.
