Talks by an A&E nurse that graphically illustrate the perils of carrying knives are having an impact on Liverpool's young people.
Lynne Wallis
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 July 2011
One of the excluded pupils in the 30-strong audience asks A&E nurse clinician Rob Jackson to describe the worst thing he has ever seen while dealing with the aftermath of knife crime.
Without hesitation, Jackson says: "A very close runner up to watching children die is seeing the look on the face of a mother when I tell her that her son has just died from knife injuries. We had a boy in recently who was asking for his mum and five minutes later he stopped breathing. We couldn't save him. If you carry knives or hang around with those who do, believe me, your luck will run out."
Jackson, 39, is addressing boys from a secondary school and others with behavioural difficulties as part of an anti-knife crime event in Liverpool's North End. The city sits alongside London and the West Midlands as the three areas with the highest knife crime in the UK. Jackson's presentations have so far reached more than 1,000 young people in Merseyside. His talk is accompanied by gruesome photographs of knife-related injuries blown up on a big screen to hammer the message home that a momentary act can have devastating consequences.
Injuries from knife attacks in Liverpool have decreased by 28% during the 18 months Jackson has been doing this pioneering work. He points out that many knife-wound victims are injured with their own blades, carried for their own protection, often against drug dealers who seize the weapon and use it against them.
Click here to read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/05/nurse-warning-on-carrying-knives
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