Burns disaster

Two weeks ago at my rural placement we had a personal development day for most of the health professions. The topic was burns, from how it occurs to how to manage it. There was a whole team of "burns specialist", one of which was a guest lecturer in our class last year. So I knew the basics of the burns and how to determine the severity of it but it was interesting to learn how to manage burns medically.

There's this one story that was told, with pictures included, has really stuck in my head. It makes you realize just how easy things can be avoided but also how easily we can be a victim of burns. I reflect back from my UW days and think about how careless I was somethings with the acidic chemicals that we were mixing. I could have easily burned my entire hand or something. Or how careless I usually am with electrical wires, just pulling them and occasionally causing mini sparks to flair up.

One of the burns Physios was telling us how this guy was out drinking and on his way home, he had to go to the washroom. Being a guy and all, he figured he would just go on the side of the road. Well not realizing or seeing what was on the ground he started peeing onto some live electrical wires. Even though he didn't ever physically touch the electrical wires his entire body got burnt because urine is ionic and it allowed the current to travel up into his body. The pictures were so disturbing. The electrical basically travelling all throughout his body and was completely burnt severely. I think he ended up losing 1 or 2 limbs but made quite the recovery when comparing what he came in with. So guys, please watch where you're peeing if you're going to go in public...