Nobody Taught Me What To Do If Someone Collapsed
Quick take
Twenty people stood around him on the platform. All of us wanted to help and none of us knew how. The emergency number, hands-only CPR, and the well-meant things that make it worse.
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Nobody Taught Me What To Do If Someone Collapsed
A man went down on the platform at our station last year. Maybe twenty people around him. Everyone had a phone out — some calling, some filming, most just standing there with the specific frozen expression of people who want to help and have absolutely no idea how.
I was one of them. Fifteen years of school and I could name the parts of a plant cell but I could not tell you what to do about a human being lying on the floor in front of me.
That gap is completely normal in India and completely absurd. So here's the short version — not enough to make you trained, but enough that you're not frozen.
Read this properly: a blog post cannot teach first aid. What it can do is remove the freeze, give you the emergency numbers, and stop you doing the things that actively make it worse. Everything below is the bystander version. Do a real certified course — the last section says how.
First: the number
Most people don't know this, and it takes four seconds to fix.
112 is India's single national emergency number — police, fire and ambulance, one number, works across every state. It works without a network and without a SIM. 108 reaches a medical ambulance directly in most states, and 102 in some.
If you remember one thing from this entire post, make it 112. Put it in your phone now, while you're reading this and not while somebody is on the ground.
When you call, say three things: exactly where you are, what happened, and whether the person is breathing.
Don't hang up until they tell you to. The dispatcher can talk you through what to do — that's part of their job.
Point at one person and tell them to call. "Someone call an ambulance" means nobody does. "You, in the blue shirt, call 112" means one person definitely does.
If they've collapsed and aren't breathing
This is the situation everyone fears and it's the one where a bystander genuinely changes the outcome. Brain damage begins within a few minutes. An ambulance rarely arrives in a few minutes. That gap is you.
Centre of the chest. Hard and fast. Don't stop.
Current guidance for an untrained bystander finding a collapsed adult is hands-only CPR — chest compressions, no rescue breaths. No mouth-to-mouth required, which removes the thing that stops most people acting.
- Check. Shout, shake their shoulders. No response and not breathing normally — occasional gasping is not normal breathing.
- Call 112 or point at someone and make them do it. Put the phone on speaker.
- Push. Heel of your hand in the centre of the chest, other hand on top, arms straight, shoulders over your hands.
- Hard and fast. Around 100–120 pushes a minute, about 5–6 cm deep for an adult. Let the chest come all the way back up between each one.
- Don't stop until help takes over or the person starts breathing normally.
The rate is roughly the beat of Stayin' Alive, which is a famously grim but genuinely useful thing to have in your head.
It will feel far too forceful. Correct CPR often does. The alternative to a possibly cracked rib is not a comfortable person — it's a dead one.
If they're unconscious but breathing
Completely different situation, completely different response. Do not do CPR on someone who is breathing.
Call 112, then roll them gently onto their side — the recovery position — so that if they vomit, it drains out instead of into their lungs. Head tilted slightly back, mouth pointing down. Stay with them and keep checking they're still breathing.
The things people do that make it worse
This is the most useful section here, because these are all common, all well-meant, and all harmful.
Please don't
- Put a spoon, key or finger in the mouth of someone having a seizure. You cannot swallow your tongue. You can absolutely break teeth and get bitten. Clear the space around them, cushion their head, time it, and let it pass.
- Hold someone down during a seizure. Restraining causes injury and stops nothing.
- Put toothpaste, haldi, ghee, butter or ice on a burn. Cool running water for about 20 minutes is the answer. The rest trap heat, cause infection, or damage tissue further.
- Move someone after a serious fall or road accident unless they're in immediate danger where they lie. Spinal injuries get worse when people are dragged.
- Give water to an unconscious or semi-conscious person. It goes into the lungs.
- Film it. Obviously. But it happens at every single incident, so it needs saying.
The burns one matters more than people realise. Kitchen burns are extremely common at home, and the folk remedy is nearly universal — which means a lot of avoidable scarring and infection every year, all of it done by someone trying to help.
Choking, quickly
If they're coughing forcefully, let them cough — that's working better than anything you'd do. Encourage it.
If they can't cough, speak or breathe, they need immediate help: firm back blows between the shoulder blades, and abdominal thrusts. The technique differs for babies and small children, and getting it wrong on an infant causes real damage — which is precisely the kind of thing you learn properly in a two-hour course and cannot learn from a paragraph.
Two hours on a mannequin. That's the whole ask.
Go and actually learn this
Everything above is the freeze-prevention version. Real training takes a couple of hours and you will practise compressions on a mannequin until your arms hurt, which is the only way it's there when you need it.
| Indian Red Cross | Runs first aid and CPR training across state branches |
| St John Ambulance India | Long-running first aid courses and certification |
| Your school | Many will arrange a session if a group of students asks. Genuinely — ask |
| Local hospitals | Larger hospitals often run community CPR awareness sessions |
*Check what's available in your city and what's age-appropriate — some certifications have minimum ages, and a parent may need to enrol you.
Ask your class teacher whether the school will organise one. A group of students asking for first aid training is a request most schools find very hard to refuse, and bas, that's usually all it takes.
Quick Tips
- Save 112 now — national, all services, works without SIM or network.
- Point at one person to call. Crowds diffuse responsibility and nobody moves.
- Not breathing → hands-only CPR, centre of chest, 100–120 per minute, don't stop.
- Breathing but unconscious → recovery position, on their side, and never CPR.
- Nothing in the mouth during a seizure — ever, no exceptions.
- Burns get cool running water, 20 minutes. Never ice, toothpaste, haldi or ghee.
Do the four-second version right now
Open your contacts and save 112. That's it — that's the whole ask for today. Then go and find out whether your school will run a first aid session, because the version of this that actually works involves your hands on a mannequin, not your eyes on a blog.
The frozen twenty people on that platform all wanted to help.Comments 0
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