Extract
A thirteen-year-old baseball player is struck in the chest with a batted
ball; he falls to the ground unresponsive. A fifteen-year-old soccer player is
stung by a bee and within minutes her eyes, and indeed her entire face, are
red and swollen and she is gasping for breath. A seventeen-year-old diabetic
collapses on the football field. You are asked to cover a game at a facility
unfamiliar to you. Could you respond promptly and efficiently to an emergency
on an unfamiliar field, or in the first three scenarios? Emergency preparation
is essential in athletics. We all hope that we never have to face a
life-threatening medical emergency in an athletic milieu, but if we do, there
is little time to figure and plot. Through prior planning and practice,
appropriate responses must come automatically.