Editor - It is always difficult to know whether you should stop at an incident (road traffic accident or otherwise) or simply drive on. Much of the uncertainty is due to not believing that you will know what to do.

As medical students there are only a few things we can do - knowing these should help us in our decision. The most important is safety first. This begins with parking safely, approaching with caution, and ensuring the safety of others - for example, getting people off the road, etc. After that the only thing we can realistically do is ABC (airway, breathing, circulation), resuscitate if necessary, and ensure that professional help is called. We can also stop bleeding by applying pressure but beyond that, without any medical equipment, there is little else we can do. Although this may seem rather basic, it is a lot compared with what the general public can do.

I have been at several incidents, including one rush hour traffic incident where a pedestrian was run over, and a stabbing. I adopted the same procedure (ABC) with both. Even this little effort was more than the crowd could do. Doing this served to reassure the people standing around and especially the victim. An ambulance arrived quickly in both cases.

I have since done a three months' placement in accident and emergency and have been on the advanced life support, advanced trauma life support, and advanced paediatric life support courses - all have proved invaluable to my confidence. I have found that a lot of the anxiety regarding stopping was related to not knowing what to do. however, just knowing that there is little realistically that we can do before the professionals arrive should boost our confidence.