A shocking episode: Care of electrical injuries

Robert Primavesi

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There ARE centres of expertise in Canada for individuals who have sustained an electrical injury
Morris TUSHINSKI, MD, FCFP

Published on: 10 August 2009
Dropping a hair dryer into the bath water would be definitely fatal
John M Sehmer

Published on: 16 July 2009

Published on: (10 August 2009)

There ARE centres of expertise in Canada for individuals who have sustained an electrical injury
Morris TUSHINSKI, MD, FCFP, Physician
I read with interest your article about electrical injuries as a there is admittedly a paucity of publications in this area. You state in your article that "There is no centre of expertise in Canada for individuals who have sustained an electrical injury." In fact I am proud to say there is.
St. John's Rehab, where I am a hospitalist caring for burn patients requiring inpatient rehab, is the only hospital in...
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I read with interest your article about electrical injuries as a there is admittedly a paucity of publications in this area. You state in your article that "There is no centre of expertise in Canada for individuals who have sustained an electrical injury." In fact I am proud to say there is.
St. John's Rehab, where I am a hospitalist caring for burn patients requiring inpatient rehab, is the only hospital in Ontario solely dedicated to specialized rehabilitation. We offer Ontario's only burn rehabilitation program.
St. John's Rehab is also the site of Canada's only dedicated electrical injury rehabilitation program. Our multidisciplinary rehabilitation team includes myself, a family/emergency physician, and a burn surgeon and works with patients and their families to offer comprehensive assessment and care to people who have been living with the adverse, often invisible, effects of electrical injuries.
To provide the best possible care at all stages of recovery, St. John's Rehab has partnered with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, the only two hospitals in Canada currently publishing research on electrical injuries. People from across the country have been assessed and treated for these injuries since the Electrical Injury Program began in 2003.
Please see our webssite.
http://www.stjohnsrehab.com/programs_services/outpatient/electrical.aspx
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Competing Interests: None declared.
Published on: (16 July 2009)

Dropping a hair dryer into the bath water would be definitely fatal
John M Sehmer, Family/ Occupational Medicine
Dropping a hair dryer into the bath water would be definitely fatal.
Contrary to Dr Primaversi's opinion (and the scenes in several old thrillers) dropping a plugged electrical device into the water while in the bath is not necessarily fatal.
I did have a patient who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by doing this and did not even get an electric shock. One only gets electrocuted when the human b...
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Dropping a hair dryer into the bath water would be definitely fatal.
Contrary to Dr Primaversi's opinion (and the scenes in several old thrillers) dropping a plugged electrical device into the water while in the bath is not necessarily fatal.
I did have a patient who tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide by doing this and did not even get an electric shock. One only gets electrocuted when the human body is completing an electrical circuit. In the bath, unless one was bathing in distilled water, the bath water is more conductive than the human body and the current would flow from the hair dryer to ground through the water.
Hydro linesmen will at times work on live electrical lines wearing suits which contain metal strands that conduct electricity and avoid electrically shocking themselves as any current flows through the path with the least electrical resistance.
A word of advice would be to not try to lift any electrical device out of bathtub while still plugged in as at that point ones body might end up being the only conductor to ground.
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Competing Interests: None declared.