Red Cross Blogs

Top five beach first aid tips

By Mark Cox
June 29, 2010 at 1:55 pm

Beaches are hell for bony kids. As a youngling, I’d get dragged to Blackpool beach on hot weekends and be left standing there, spindly and ghost-white, in the glaring sun. I felt like the skinny guy in the famous Charles Atlas ads who gets sand kicked in his face. Once, I took my top off and a dog tried to bury me.

But then the British don’t do beaches very well. For fifty weeks a year, our coastal bays just sit there, unused and looking faintly embarrassed. Then the sun comes out and the great British public spills over, lemming-like, on to the sands. And, all too often, many of them end up in the wars.

What with choppy waters, blazing sun, jellyfish, sharp things in the sand (not to mention the risk of tinnitus from the god-awful dance music someone will likely be blasting out five yards away) it’s a risky business. So here are some first aid tips:

1. Drowning
Few things are as enjoyable as swimming in a lovely, warm sea, but things can quickly go wrong if someone gets out of their depth or is caught in a current. It’s important to know what to do to help a casualty rescued from the water, so check our advice on how to save someone who’s drowning.

2. Cut feet from broken shells or glass
This is a particularly rubbish injury to have on a beach. It hurts, sand gets into the cut and – unless you’re a circus acrobat given to regularly scooting about on your hands – you’ll have to walk on the injured paw. Ouch. The key thing is to make sure you clean the wound thoroughly with clean water or alcohol-free wipes – then follow our guidelines on how to treat a bleeding wound.

3. Heat exhaustion or heatstroke
‘Hey, it’s baking hot! Let’s go down to the beach, rub in some factor zero and toast ourselves for seven hours. Water? Nah, I’ve got six cans of very strong, dehydrating lager here. What could possibly go wrong?’

Quite a lot actually. In hot weather, the body sometimes produces more heat than it can cope with, leading to heat exhaustion. Casualties will likely suffer from headaches, dizziness and nausea, so you should help  them to a cool, shady place, get them to lie down and give them plenty of water to drink. Oral rehydration salts or isotonic drinks will also help.

Potentially much more serious is heatstroke, where casualties stop sweating and can lose consciousness within minutes. You’ll need to react quickly if this happens.

4. Jellyfish stings
Imagine: horrible, frantic, nasty tentacles grabbing at you all over, causing great discomfort and distress. Most lady readers will by now be thinking back to early teenage dates, but I am in fact referring to that slimy ambassador of the sea, Gelatinous Zooplankton (to use its posh Sunday name).

The big danger with jellyfish stings is that they can, in some cases, cause anaphylactic shock – a severe allergic reaction that may develop within minutes or even seconds. Blood pressure falls and the tongue and throat can swell, obstructing the airway. A casualty with anaphylactic shock will need urgent medical help, so follow our first aid advice.

5. To wee or not to wee?
Interesting first aid fact regarding the above: contrary to popular jellyfish myth, it does not in fact help to have a wee on the affected sting area. (Though obviously, if that’s the sort of thing that floats your boat, knock yourself out.)

So play it safe and have a lovely time on the beach. And if you see a skinny kid, don’t laugh at him.

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Tags: Emergencies, First aid, first aid tips, first aid training

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