Epilepsy - Stop Look Listen

Hi everyone, in today’s Stop Look Listen, I want to focus on epilepsy. I’m going to focus upon the main kind of seizure that you would possible come across, which would be a tonic-clonic seizure.

Now that’s one where somebody has gone stiff, they’ve lost consciousness, the lips have possibly gone blue and they are potentially convulsing as well.

Now Epilepsy Action have a number of really good tips for you to know what to do if you come across this kind of situation.

So really, it’s all about taking action. So, the first thing to do is to assess the situation. Is the person in any immediate danger to them self? Have they landed near some kind of hard furniture that you could possibly move, like a chair out of the way? Have they been cooking and a knife’s gone on the floor with them? Can you move that out of the way safely? So just try and sensibly make sure that they’re safe. Then try and cushion their head. So don’t restrain the head at all or try and move them, but try and put something like a blanket or a jumper or cushion under their head just to cushion obviously their head from the amount of blows that they may be getting from the involuntary movements.

Then the important thing is to time it. For seizures that lasts more than five minutes, you really should be ringing an ambulance. And if somebody has gone unconscious but then regained consciousness, and then gone unconscious again with more seizures, it’s really important to ring an ambulance. Try and find maybe an identity bracelet or an identity card if you don’t know who the person is, there may be some medical information in there so that when you do ring medical professionals, they can quickly know what’s going on and what they need to do in regards to their response.

When the seizures are done and dusted and completely over and done with and fully stopped, at that point you can possibly put the person onto their side, but probably the recovery position which is usually I believe the left, and just try and be calm and reassuring to them until someone professional arrives.

And then the really important thing is never ever restrain the person. It may be tempting I think from old practices to sort of like, say, put something in their mouth so they don’t bite their tongue or clench down on their tongue, don’t put anything in their mouth, don’t give them food and water, just keep them calm, keep them reassured until medical professionals can arrive.