Let's talk about scene safety. The first rule of responding to any casualty situation is making sure that you're keeping yourself safe, so that you don't become a casualty and make a bad situation even worse.
In the military, what this might mean is you're in a firefight. You need to return fire, establish superiority. Get to that casualty or have that casualty returning fire and retreating to a safer location.
where you're at law enforcement. This may be an active shooter threat where you need to focus on eliminating the threat first and then going to the casualty, or you're eliminating that threat. In some sort of rescue task force, you're going in to provide treatment and care to that wounded person.
Now, on the civilian side, what you want to do is you wanna look at that scene, and so this may mean a lot of different things. One of the more common things you may respond to is a car accident. If that car's on fire before rushing in and you yourself become a burn victim, you may need to bring in a fire extinguisher, put out the fire so that you can access that casually, and get them out of the car safely and to a safer area. Keep in mind too, in car accidents, you've got a lot of traffic that's coming through. You need to make sure that you're not getting hit by a vehicle in a natural disaster like we've recently had. That may mean a flood, and so you gotta think about accessing that victim and getting to them so you can provide care and getting them back to you in a safe manner, and then providing proper care. In a structural collapse, this means getting a good evaluation of the building and seeing if it's safe to go in. You may need to wait until rescuers can help you shore up and make sure you got safe passage to get that casualty out of harm's way and then start your treatment on it.
There are a lot of different scenarios to consider, and that can play out when you're going in to treat a casualty. Really, what you need to consider is will you become a casualty or make the situation worse by rushing in to provide care.
