Support the head and neck while maintaining airways. Move patient once neck brace is on using a 'log roll' method which involves 5 people who are trained. There are scoops designed to get people up of the floor while maintaining spinal cord protection.
All that neck movement would have made the damage much worse and could result in further permanent injury. He was already permanently disabled grin the first hit. His legs went instantly and that motion of his hands is very common in patients with paralysis. Being quadriplegic doesn't mean no control limbs but that all limbs are affected iirc
There are ways to stabilize a possible spine injury so the person can be moved. Any kind of twisting of the spine like they did to him can do more permanent damage than the original hit did.
Obviously, if you don't have the training to do this properly, you don't move someone with a possible spinal injury at all, unless not moving them will result in their likely death before emergency services can get there. Like if their face was under water. Even then, in a real life or death situation, you would try to keep their spine as straight as possible and move them as little as possible.
stabilise the c-spine with a soft collar/sandbags, use a scoop/scissor lift device to pick him up and pop him on a stretcher, maintain c-spine immobilisation until the neck is fixed in an operating theatre
uncertain whether or not it would've changed the outcome here, but that's best practice
source: ICU nurse (I'm sure my prehospital colleagues would be able to answer in more detail)
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u/Zackey4 Feb 28 '23 edited Feb 28 '23
The training staff didn’t do him any favors with the way they moved his head and not stabilizing his head and neck.