Parents to the rescue

Would you know what to do if your child was injured? A basic first-aid course could make all the difference, says Sheridan McCoid

On the last day of the Christmas holidays, Doug Taylor, from Lewes in East Sussex, took his two children, Mia, 10, and Tom, eight, on their favourite walk to try out the camping kettle Doug had been given for Christmas. They walked for about 40 minutes before they stopped for tea. It was about 3.45pm and they couldn't hang around too long if they were to make it back to the car with some light.

As the kettle seemed to be taking too long, "really stupidly", says Taylor, "I put the cork in." When the water finally boiled, the kettle exploded, splattering scalding water. "Tom started screaming," says Taylor. "I looked at his face and saw it was OK, but then looked down at his hand. The skin was hanging off. I knew we needed cold water, but we didn't have any, the car was a good 40-minute walk away and it was getting dark. I called an ambulance but struggled to pinpoint exactly where we were. I had the most awful sense of rising panic and felt utterly impotent."

At that moment, out of the gloaming, a woman with two children appeared. She did have cold water and knew exactly what to do as her son had suffered a burn in similar circumstances a couple of years ago. "She produced an empty plastic bag from her pocket, the sort you put vegetables in at the supermarket, and wrapped it round Tom's arm. We then soaked my T-shirt in water and wrapped that round it too. Her car was parked nearby and so she drove us to my car and then I followed her to the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead, which specialises in burns."