Safety and emergency

RICE

Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation

The long-taught approach to a soft-tissue injury. Variants add a P for Protection at the front (PRICE) or a further P for Protection and Prevention (POLICE, which replaces Rest with Optimal Loading).

Sports-medicine guidance has moved considerably since RICE was coined in the 1970s, and several newer acronyms exist precisely because of that. Learn it as vocabulary that an exam may ask about, not as current injury management.

What each letter stands for

  1. 1 Rest.
  2. 2 Ice.
  3. 3 Compression.
  4. 4 Elevation.

How it gets tested

Asked as a straight expansion item. Where an exam offers both RICE and PRICE, it is testing whether the Protection step is recognized.

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