My review of the proposed new safety procedures

Hi SBW committee,

As I will not be able to attend the next SBW committee meeting on July 6th I thought I would let you know my thoughts about the proposed new safety procedures which will be discussed and decided at that meeting, although this email will just be about the "supposed" trial of the emergency contact sheet.

Although the minutes from the March committee meeting state "the trial of an 'emergency contact sheet' with further revisions will continue and results/reactions reported at the next meeting" - it appears that the "results/reactions" will probably not be reported at the next meeting because the 'emergency contact sheet' has already been incorporated into the proposed new safety procedures.

IMHO, the emergency contact sheet should not necessarily be sent to anyone!

The emergency contact sheet was introduced to provide the leader of a walk with emergency contact details so that if a walker was injured, their emergency contact could provide details about the walker's doctor, medical history, blood type, allergies, medications, and next of kin. The emergency contact is the person who the leader can contact to okay emergency surgery, or to agree to the turning off of life-support systems, or to find out which funeral home to send the body to.

Walkers such as Karen and myself don't want our emergency contacts to be phoned if we are late arriving home. In fact, our emergency contact may not even know that she is listed on the emergency contact sheet! Karen and I list Karen's sister-in-law as our emergency contact. Not only do we not want her contacted if the walk leader hasn't reported in at the end of the day, we don't even want her contacted if the PLB is activated, because the emergency will not necessarily be happening to us. She will be contacted if the rescue teams get to us, find that either Karen or myself is injured or dead, and the rescue teams will get our contact details off the form in the leader's possession.

Using the emergency contact sheet as a list of people who will be contacted if the walk is late will send conflicting messages to our members - do they put down their real emergency contact or do they simply put down a person who will miss them if they don't come home?

There has to be a better way, and I will discuss that in my next email which will point out the many other failings (in my opinion) of the new safety procedures - sorry Julienne.

Cheers,
Brett