Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Dylana Milobar

NATIONAL INJURY PREVENTION DAY

National Injury Prevention Day comes during usual summertime ER visit peak

Jul 5, 2019 | 10:01 AM

KAMLOOPS — Today Canadians are urged to take precautions, with the third annual National Injury Prevention Day.

With Royal Inland Hospital’s Emergency Department treating about 700 to 800 trauma cases each year, Dr. Henk Van Zyl says he and the rest of the doctors at RIH are reminding people to make smart decisions.

“The ones that we see are the ones that make it. So about 10 per cent of these injuries that occur don’t actually make it to the hospital.”

Van Zyl says most accidents can be prevented with a second thought decision, or care taken in simple actions.

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“A fair percentage of people that we see here come in, and we ask them, ‘why were you on the ladder?’, and they say ‘Yeah I knew that was a stupid idea,'”. He explains, “Most of the time, people have a premonition of how they could have prevented what brought them to our place. And a lot of people don’t go home from here. We do see a lot of bad trauma, we do see a lot of accidents. Especially in the summer time.”

All too often, Van Zyl says patients come to the ER in the summer after a recreation or driving related accident. Many of those can involve alcohol or drug impairment, or distracted practices.

“I think we’ve all made bad decisions, and some of us were lucky enough that we didn’t hurt other people with them,” Van Zyl says, “We see a lot of regret in this emergency department, and a lot of people that have the blood of others on their hands because they didn’t so that. So don’t be that person.”