15 free questions from the CinnaEMS scene size-up and safety bank (421 in the app). Tap an answer to check it. The rationale opens right away.
You were sent for a man who cut his hand, and you find two men shoving each other in the front yard. No law enforcement has been dispatched. You should:
Answer: A. Back away and request police before anything else
A call that sounded routine can be violent on arrival, and the response is the same as if it had been dispatched that way: get out of reach and ask for police, with a description of what you saw. Stepping between two fighting people makes a provider the next patient, and a parked ambulance in plain view is neither cover nor distance if the fight moves toward it.
Your crew is sent for an unwell adult and you wear gloves only. On arrival the patient is coughing hard and there is blood in the tissue in her hand. The correct response is to:
Answer: A. Step back, add eye and face protection, then continue
Protection is re-chosen whenever the call turns out to be a different call, and stepping back for ten seconds costs nothing compared with a splash to the eyes. Gloves answer contact and nothing above the wrists, hurrying increases the exposure rather than shortening it, and asking a sick patient to manage your protection for you makes her responsible for your safety.
Twenty minutes after an electric car crashed, its battery pack starts hissing and letting out white vapor. You are treating the driver nearby. You should:
Answer: A. Move the patient and crew well back and upwind, and warn the fire crew
A damaged lithium-ion battery can overheat and catch fire minutes or even hours after a crash. The vapor it gives off is toxic and can ignite. Getting everyone back and upwind is the crew's only safe move, and fire service has to handle the battery itself. Calling it steam ignores the warning. A small hand extinguisher cannot stop this kind of fire, and opening the car keeps someone right beside it.
A teenager is clinging to a branch in a fast-moving creek about fifteen feet from the bank. As a crew without water rescue training you should:
Answer: A. Throw a flotation device and talk them toward the bank
Reaching and throwing are the techniques that work from dry land, and a flotation device buys the patient time without putting an untrained rescuer into moving water. Wading, swimming or sending a bystander converts one victim into two or three.
A car has rolled at low speed into a hedge with only minor damage. The driver is sweaty, confused and slow to answer. There is no smell of alcohol. How to read this scene:
Answer: A. A medical problem may have caused the crash, so assess for it as well as injury
The damage does not match how unwell the driver looks. When a driver is this confused after a gentle crash, the cause may be a medical problem such as low blood sugar, a seizure or a stroke. Keep the mechanism in mind and assess for injury, but look for the nature of illness too. Blaming a head injury or 'being shaken' misses the likelier cause, and suspecting intoxication does not delay care.
You are on a rural farm road where the next available ambulance is forty minutes away. What that distance should change about your size-up is:
Answer: A. You plan to manage everything yourselves for longer
With no second crew within reach, everything you might need has to come in on the first trip and every decision stays yours for a long time, which is why the request for help goes out earlier in a rural response, not later. Cutting the assessment short trades information for road time you are going to spend anyway, and waiting for a unit you have not asked for helps nobody.
You have been kneeling beside a stack of sheet lumber for several minutes, and it is leaning further out than when you knelt down. You should:
Answer: A. Move the patient clear of it before you do anything else
A load that has moved is a load that is still moving, and nothing you are doing for this patient matters if a stack of material comes down on both of you — so the patient and the crew come out from under it first. People cannot hold a leaning stack, the side it falls away from changes as it goes, and the history of who touched it is a question for afterward.
You are sent to a man who fell while clearing gutters. The ladder is lying flat on the lawn with its feet several feet out from the wall. What that says is:
Answer: A. The ladder went down with him rather than staying put
A ladder that slid out at the base falls with the person on it, which makes this a fall from the working height plus a struck object, not a step off the bottom rung. A ladder taken down deliberately is normally closed or leaned, and the other readings require somebody to have seen something nobody has described to you.
Your crew has been on a complicated scene for forty minutes, and everyone present is working on the patient. What is missing is:
Answer: A. Somebody whose job is to keep watching outward
Long scenes fail because every pair of eyes ends up pointed at the patient, and the change that hurts a crew arrives from outside that circle — so one person keeps looking up, at the people, the traffic and the exits. A spare ambulance is a resource decision, and crew vitals and a visitor log are records that nobody is reading while the scene is changing.
A car in a parking lot collision has barely a mark on its bumper. What that damage tells you about the people who were inside it is:
Answer: A. Only that the forces were likely lower, not that nobody is hurt
Vehicle damage estimates energy and nothing more: a bumper is designed to survive low-speed contact, and a body inside can still be loaded by a sudden stop. Low damage lowers suspicion without clearing anybody, which is why it never becomes a reason to skip an assessment, a report or laying eyes on each occupant.
You are told the man slipped off the bottom step, but the handrail is torn away from the wall halfway up the flight and there is a dent in the plaster at the turn. Your size-up should:
Answer: A. Follow what the staircase shows you
Physical evidence outranks a secondhand account because it was made by the event rather than by a person remembering it, and a rail pulled off the wall above the landing describes a fall from height down a flight. Taking the account at face value builds the plan on the wrong event, and cross-examining a family costs time without producing evidence.
A crew member says he would rather not report a small splash because the scene was clean and the patient looked well. The reason that reasoning fails is that:
Answer: A. Neither of those things is known from looking
Both of his reassurances are appearances: a tidy room says nothing about what a person carries, and neither does looking well. Reporting exists so somebody with the information can assess the risk instead of the exposed provider guessing at it. Splashes count wherever they land, the obligation is his own, and the record is not the point of it.
A long extrication that began in the afternoon is still running as the light goes. The part of the size-up that has to be done again is:
Answer: A. The hazards you can no longer see in the dark
Everything you cleared visually on arrival — glass, fluid, a drop off the shoulder, the edge of the roadway — stops being cleared the moment you cannot see it, so darkness restarts that part of the size-up and usually means lighting the scene. Patient count and mechanism were established from facts that daylight does not change, and a route already walked is known.
From the roadway you can see a car upside down against a wall with its roof crushed and a person inside. The request that belongs now rather than later is:
Answer: A. Rescue, because getting him out will need tools
Everything you can see from the road says this compartment has to be opened, and tools and the people who use them take minutes to arrive that you cannot buy back later. Traffic control and supervision may both be wanted, but neither one gets the patient out, and a second ambulance is for occupants you have not yet counted.
At an industrial scene the machine holding your patient has been switched off, but its control panel is around a corner and out of sight. Before anyone reaches in you should:
Answer: A. Have someone stay at the panel so it cannot restart
Once a machine is off, the hazard is an unexpected restart, and the only reliable control is somebody with authority physically at the energy source — which is what a plant's lock-out procedure formalizes. A warning shouted at someone whose arm is inside a machine arrives far too late, and killing power to a whole building takes out lighting, ventilation and elevators while leaving that one switch exactly where it was.
Answer all 15 questions to see how you did.
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