Electric Shock First Aid: Break the Contact Before You Touch Anyone

Why the first instinct is the dangerous one

Someone collapses at a machine or by a socket and the immediate human reaction is to grab them. If the current is still flowing through them, it will flow through you, and a rescue turns into two casualties with nobody left to call for help.

NHS guidance puts this first for a reason: do not touch the injured person while they are still in contact with the electrical source. The seconds spent breaking the contact properly are not wasted seconds.

What to do, in order

1. Look at the area. Work out whether they are still in contact with the source, and whether the source is still live.
2. Break the contact safely. Switch off the current at the mains or meter point if you can. Otherwise remove the plug or pull the cable free.
3. If you cannot turn it off, move the source away from them. Stand on dry insulating material such as a wooden box or a plastic mat, and use a wooden pole or broom to push the source clear. If nothing wooden is available, a length of rope tied around their ankles or under their arms can be used to pull them away, taking care not to touch them as you attach it.
4. Phone 999.
5. Check them. Once you are sure the contact is broken, check airway, breathing and circulation. If they are not breathing normally, start CPR and send someone for a defibrillator.

What not to do

• Do not touch the casualty while they are still in contact with the current
• Do not use anything metallic to break the current
• Do not approach high-voltage wires until the power is turned off
• Do not move someone with an electrical injury unless they are in immediate danger and are clear of the electricity

High voltage is a different situation entirely

Everything above about wooden poles and plastic mats applies to ordinary domestic and commercial voltages. It does not apply to high-voltage supplies.

High voltage can arc across a gap, which means you do not have to touch anything to be injured. If someone is in contact with overhead lines, a substation, railway equipment or anything similar, the only correct action is to keep everyone well back and wait for the supply to be isolated by the people who control it. Do not attempt a rescue and do not let anyone else attempt one.

The burn you cannot see

This is the part that catches people out. Current enters the body at one point and exits at another, and it damages tissue along the whole path in between. NHS guidance is explicit that the burn “may be very small or not visible at all” while still causing damage deep into the body’s tissues.

So the seriousness of an electrical injury cannot be judged from the skin. A person who looks fine, with two small marks on a hand and a foot, may have significant internal injury between the two.

Anyone who has had an electric shock should be medically assessed. For the burns themselves, the ordinary rule applies: cool running water for 20 minutes, never ice. That, and everything else people get wrong about burns, is in should you put ice on a burn?

Why the heart matters here

An electric shock can stun the heart and stop it, and it can stop breathing. That is why an electrical incident is one of the situations where a workplace defibrillator earns its place, and why CPR training matters more than knowing a sequence of steps for burns.

If someone is unresponsive and not breathing normally after a shock, once you are certain they are clear of the electricity: call 999, start chest compressions, and get a defibrillator. It will analyse the rhythm and will not shock one that does not need it, so an untrained bystander cannot harm them with it. We go through what that involves in workplace defibrillators.

Electrical incidents at work

Low-voltage shocks at work usually come from faulty or loose switches, frayed flexes, faulty appliances, or handling electrical equipment with wet hands or while standing on a wet floor. High-voltage incidents are mostly an industrial and utilities problem.

Two duties sit behind all of this and they are worth naming. The Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 require electrical systems to be constructed and maintained so as to prevent danger, and require that work on or near electrical systems is carried out in a way that prevents injury. Separately, the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require a suitable and sufficient risk assessment, written down once you employ five or more people.

In practice that means the response to an electrical injury is mostly decided long before anyone is hurt:

• Can the power be isolated quickly, by someone who is on site? If the only person who knows where the isolator is works days, your night shift has a problem.
• Is there something non-conductive to hand? A wooden broom in a plant room is a first aid item even though it will not be in any kit.
• Does your first aid needs assessment account for electrical risk? A workplace where cardiac arrest is a foreseeable outcome is a different assessment from an office.
• Do your first aiders know not to touch? It is the single most important thing and the least intuitive.

Electrical risk is one of the hazards a workplace risk assessment is meant to surface, and the level of first aid cover it justifies comes out of your first aid needs assessment. Where the assessment points at serious foreseeable injury, that usually means the three-day First Aid at Work qualification rather than the one-day course, and we compare the two in First Aid at Work: one day or three?

If electricity is a genuine risk in your workplace, it should be showing up in both your risk assessment and your first aid provision. Call 0845 838 4643 or use the enquiry form and we will talk through what your assessment points at.