This is what paramedics Nico and Jolande encounter during Eurekaweek

As first aid responders, Nico and Jolande Boef have been involved in Eurekaweek for more than ten years. During this year’s sports day, they encountered all sorts of situations: an injured guide, a dislocated arm, and many students in need of a paracetamol.

“I wonder if I can borrow the wheelchair”, a girl calls into the EHBD cabin. “Is that for the dislocated shoulder?” Nico responds calmly. “Yes, she can’t walk because of the pain”, the girl replies. It’s 1.10 pm, and the sports day has officially kicked off only ten minutes ago.

This year, Nico and Jolande Boef, along with their team, are providing their EHBD service at the Eurekaweek for the fourteenth time. Their first aid expertise is specialised in alcohol and drug-related incidents, a valuable skill when working with students. The couple is well-prepared for such situations, having also worked at commercial events, such as those held at the Maassilo. “We can tell not just if someone has taken drugs, but also what combination of drugs”, Jolande explains. Compared to the events they usually work at, the Eurekaweek is quite mild. “Some days we see thirty students, other days just three”, Jolande says. Most come in for plasters or paracetamol, or simply to ask where the toilet is. “Two years ago, we had about seventy wasp stings”, Nico recalls. “We were constantly sucking out venom.”

112

The most intense incident they’ve experienced during the sports day? “Years ago, a boy wanted to impress a girl at the sports day. I saw it all happening”, Jolande recounts. He attempted a somersault on a mat and landed badly, breaking his back. 112 had to be called. “Luckily, there was a medic on a motorbike nearby who received the alert on his radio and was there within minutes.” The paramedics later lifted the boy into the ambulance using a harness. “Fortunately, he fully recovered”, Nico adds.

“Someone has fainted”, a girl says, arriving breathlessly at the first aid post. We follow her. A boy is sitting on the ground by a picnic table, slumped over. The paramedics speak to him briefly, he drinks some water, and then they help him up by the arm. At the EHBD post, they sit him down on a garden chair. He is given a Dextro tablet, and his blood pressure is taken. “I don’t know if it’s just this week, or if they never do it, but students don’t take good care of themselves. They don’t eat or drink enough. Or they get overtired”, Jolande explains.

Bike fall

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old medical student with a swelling under his eye and a graze on his cheek approaches the paramedics. He looks as if he’s been punched in the face. The collar of his green guide shirt has a hole in it. He sits down on the bench in the cabin and is given a cooling pad to hold under his eye to reduce the swelling. “I fell off my bike drunk on Monday night on the Erasmus Bridge.” The heat from the sports day has caused the wound to swell badly.

The girl he was cycling home with called out that she was going faster. “I thought she was challenging me to a race”, he says with a smile. When he fell, a man got out of a black van, claiming to be a police officer, and rinsed his wound with water. The paramedics examine his injuries and ask if he has any symptoms of a concussion. “If anyone asks, I’ll say I got into a fight with five guys.”