June 2002 Volume 83 Number 6 "serving the protectors"

After the assault

Recent media reports on violent acts against police have the public stirred up about increasing levels of violence in the community. Discussions about the causes often centre on mental illness, how to care for disturbed patients and how people using drugs become more violent. The use of firearms and the safety of the community are all discussed at length, but rarely is there a mention of the increased risk that police face through these acts of violence.

Police are always the first called to disturbances. So, when the community suffers greater levels of violence so, too, does the street cop.

But how should police react to both violence and injury. If you are injured, or someone near to you is hurt, you will find the flow-on effects sometimes take years to deal with and engender hours of thinking.

Your IMOST training will help you survive an attack, but how will you deal with long-term effects?

Initially, the response must be to protect your personal safety and survive. First-aid measures to stop bleeding and maintain your breathing and circulation are essential.

Our ambulance service is experienced and trained in resuscitation. Officers know well the further steps to take at the site of the injury before moving you to hospital. And, through increased acts of violence, hospitals have become experienced in handling gunshot injuries, stabbings and the like.

The ambulance service has a well-planned strategy to keep you alive and escort you to the best hospital facility – one experienced in the injury you might have sustained. The retrieval system, paramedics and emergency medicine programmes in Adelaide are as good as any in the world. Physical survival is handled well, and assisted by your own level of fitness and attitude to the injury.

Following an acute injury, you will find yourself going over the incident in your mind, and wondering whether you could have handled it differently. If your partner – or anyone else – is injured or killed, you might find the Coroner spending hours going over a few seconds of your life. Many hours of discussion about what you did and the choices you made might follow.

You might have many people spending hours discussing you and suggesting what you did was wrong. Or, you might find that, after a short time, no one is discussing the events; that you are either still recovering from your injury or having trouble with ongoing pain.

This is the time to find someone to talk to about ways to overcome this lingering pain, which might be physical or psychological. While there will always be some effect, there is always some way to help.

Physical pain is likely to result from any scarring or injury. Sometimes, small scars on the outside will cause pain that surprises you. This is often dismissed as psychological pain, but recent research has usually shown there is a reason for the pain. Sometimes further operations are required; other times, medication is needed to control the pain.

Machines, exercises and various other “tricks” can be used to control the pain. If you have pain after an assault, do not dismiss the discomfort. If it can’t be fixed, it can always be treated to some degree.

Some people talk of the psychological pain after an assault. This is usually discussed in the context of post-traumatic stress disorder. There are various names for and ways of describing the problem. It is more important to recognize the feeling than worry about the name.

Usually, it feels like you are going over the events more than you want to, or that, while you talk about them, other people seem to have lost interest in what happened. (Sometimes the opposite happens: the media, your friends or courts want to talk about it and you don’t.) If this happens, it should be dealt with in the same way in which you would deal with a painful scar or sore leg: get help and describe the symptoms.

Dealing with psychological pain after an injury is usually best handled in the same way you would handle any other event in your life. You can apply your existing coping skills to the situation. If you are a person who likes to talk things through with friends, then do the same here, or find a group of people to whom you can talk.

Some people like to quietly think it over by themselves. Some people turn to alcohol. All of these methods have their good and bad sides, so it becomes a matter of judgement as to which one to use – and use wisely. This is when it is best to have professional help to keep the balance right.

If the help you receive is good, it will enable you to sort out the pain in a way that suits you. Going over an incident too much can make it bigger than it was in reality. On the other hand, not talking about it might, with time, distort the true picture.

To survive an assault, you must respond quickly with self-defence, use help to deal with acute injury, and treat subsequent physical and psychological pain with due importance.

Your questions answered

Dr Pearce will answer questions on any health issue important to you. For his response, write to or fax the Police Journal with your question. Those who write need not identify themselves.

• Police Journal, PO Box 6128, Halifax St, Adelaide, SA, 5000
• Internal dispatch, post code 168
• Fax: 8231 0855

If you prefer to correspond by e-mail, send messages to the associate editor
(brettwilliams@policejournalsa.org.au).

PASAweb   Index & Search   Top of Page   Comments   Email to Editor

The Police Journal Online is an official publication of the Police Association of South Australia and is published monthly. Editors of kindred publications can seek permission from the Editor to re-publish any Police Journal Online article. Copyright 2001  The Police Association of South Australia sustance