The Collapse of Christian Eriksen in EURO 2020 ; a landmark display of humanity and learning for healthcare

It was a EURO match between Finland and Denmark where the Denmark player Christian Eriksen fell down and collapsed. The reason is not known but it was observed that he lost his consciousness while going forward to take the ball and fall on his face. The players surrounding him, both his team and the Finland team raised an alarm. The referee was also keen enough not just watching the ball but also the player and immediately stopped the match. One of the players held his head, another cleared his throat from falling back of tongue, while the other removed his t-shirt to wipe his tears. As medics arrived and CPR started, his teammates formed a ring to protect the privacy with emotions flowing out and hands folded in prayer. The Camera man instead of zooming in to the incident zoomed out and showed the aerial view of the ground. Their captain comforted the anxious and weeping wife of Eriksen. While Eriksen was carried to the hospital, Finland fans gave their countries flags to shield him to maintain privacy. The whole stadium from roaring went into anxious silence. When the match was stopped the whole stadium prayed for his safety and chanted his name irrespective of the country they supported. As the news of his stability was announced the whole stadium was in joy. The decision not to celebrate by the Finland players when they scored a goal against Denmark is remarkable, so is the Belgian player dedicating his goal with love to Eriksen against Russia in another match. These were not just the random acts but acts of humanity where in privacy the individual was given its due worth rather than getting more views of the live stream, a human life was given its value irrespective of nationality, Players displayed the highest level of maturity and so were the camera persons and the audience.

Being in healthcare we have seen many people collapsing in our hospitals in the ER, ICU , wards etc.

• It’s a high time when we should train each and every staff including security personnel to get trained in CPR.
• A Campaign should be run to train all the traffic police, police personnel, Swiggy, Zomato delivery boys, auto rickshaw drivers, cab drivers, students, employees and students to learn the basics of what to do when someone collapses.
• It should be recommended that each and every traffic signal stop should have one Defibrillator.
• This story should be discussed with the staff, children and appraise them about the importance of learning about CPR and multiple other humanity lessons that this event has taught us.
• Mock Drills should be done regularly in the hospital where in these aspects should be done regularly and trained.
• The privacy of the patient should be given due importance rather than sensationalism ( which we recently witnessed in the COVID deaths).
• A separate person among the team should be allotted to comfort the patient’s attendants who will obviously be concerned and anxious.
• They should never be given the slip to get some medicines from the medical shop nor should be counselled immediately about the finances of shifting into the ICU
• Group activities should be planned in the staff so that they develop a feeling of togetherness with each other.
• Regular activities should be done either as lectures or as videos or movies where in we inject the doses and boosters of humanity, empathy, compassion, caring etc
• These staff who go a step further to help the patients out of the box and showing care should be rewarded and awarded so that the habit of doing good in the staff increases. They should compete with each other in being more humane to the patients who come to the hospitals.