Paying for first aid

Press, 31 January 1986, Page 16

Paying for first aid

The desire of the Accident Compensation Corporation to have more sports , club members trained in first aid is commendable. The difficulties being encountered by St John Ambulance in finding sufficient trained officers to attend the growing number of sports venues is obvious and the organisation’s willingness to train more firstaiders is welcome. The enthusiasm with which the corporation and St John have embarked on their two-year campaign to train sports officials in first aid is one thing: but the corporation’s unveiled threat of extracting levies from sports clubs if the campaign fails is distinctly unhelpful.

Somewhere in the criticism of sports clubs’ reluctance to accept the added responsibility of first aid duties, and of being too bound up in their sport, it seems to have been forgotten that most sports administrators, coaches and parents who are pressed into service are also volunteers. Their time is not infinite and the A.C.C.’s bigstick approach is more likely to encourage them to give up their efforts than to induce them to take a first aid course. All of these people have the interests of their sport and their charges at heart, and most would respond better to a more reasoned campaign. Sports clubs faced with an A.C.C. levy would have to raise more money, possibly by increasing membership subscriptions. If the corporation were to try to recover in levies the $25 rhillion a year it says is paid out on sport-related injuries, sports people would end up paying as much to the A.C.C. as they do to their clubs; and in junior grades probably more. A consequence of this policy would be fewer people playing organised sport and a population less fit and healthy.

A great many sports injuries occur in recreational activities unassociated with any club. Levying one group of sportsmen and women and not another is most unfair, but there is no easy way for the A.C.C. to extract income from all recreational activities, some of which have a very low rate of injury and have little call on A.C.C. payments. Another catch is that some sports generate a lot of income from spectators. The argument that these sports should be ready to pay up for accidents is obviously strong. It is even stronger when sport and recreation are part of commercial enterprises. It might even be argued that some recreational activities which entail a high risk of injury should pay a high levy towards accident compensation. Until the commission can work out a fair allocatiaon of costs — and afair, or even a certain way of extracting the levies the idea ’ has little merit.

The corporation’s complaint about paying out $25 million a year — about 8 per cent of its total annual pay-outs — on sport-related injuries might have as much to do with the corporation’s generosity and liberal interpretation of its purpose as it has to do with the level of injuries in sport. The more people who can offer first aid the better, whether at home, in the workplace, or on the sports field. The corporation’s bullying tone is unlikely to swell the ranks of first-aiders but the number of sports injuries each week-end just might do so. On one score, the sports bodies should certainly be more attentive: too often, their readiness to give a donation to the ambulance services has been lacking or miserable. Short of this, they should be encouraging more members to become competent first-aiders themselves.