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Support it where it lies, check the circulation, and do not attempt to put it back. Pulling and twisting a dislocated joint is how nerves and arteries get damaged, and the damage is often permanent.

A dislocation is a joint where the bone ends have come out of position. Shoulders are commonest, then fingers, kneecaps, elbows, jaws and hips.

They are extremely painful, they look alarming, and the whole of your job is to stop it getting worse.

Recognising it

Obvious deformity. The joint looks wrong, and the person will usually tell you immediately that it is out.
Severe pain, worse on any movement.
Inability to move the joint, or to move it normally.
Swelling and bruising, developing quickly.
A hollow or a lump where there should not be one. A dislocated shoulder characteristically loses its rounded contour and looks square, with a visible dip below the collarbone.
The limb held rigidly in a particular position, which the person will resist you changing.

Fracture and dislocation look similar and often occur together. You do not need to tell them apart, because the immediate treatment is the same: support it where it lies and do not move it.

What to do

Pad generously around the joint rather than pulling it into a splint. The support goes around the shape it is in, not the shape you want.
A shoulder is best supported with a sling plus a broad bandage around the body to stop the arm swinging, with padding in the gap between the arm and the chest.
A finger can be gently supported alongside its neighbour with padding between, but do not force it straight.
A kneecap frequently relocates itself when the leg is gently straightened; if it does not, support it as it is.
Nothing to eat or drink if there is a realistic prospect of hospital treatment, since reduction is often done under sedation.

Why not to put it back

DANGER

Do not pull, twist, lever or manipulate a dislocated joint.

Around every major joint run nerves and arteries, and in a dislocation they are already stretched and displaced. Pulling or twisting can tear them, and the resulting nerve injury is frequently permanent: a lasting weakness or numbness in the limb.

The other reason is that dislocations very often come with fractures, and you cannot tell from the outside. Manipulating a joint with a fracture around it drives broken bone into soft tissue, and turns an injury that would have been fixed in an hour into one that may never be right.

Even trained clinicians reduce joints with imaging first where they can, precisely because of that.

"I've seen it done" and "he does his own shoulder" are not reasons. Some people with recurrent dislocations genuinely do reduce their own, having been taught after many episodes, and that is a specific case rather than a general permission.

The circulation check

The reason this page insists on it: a dislocated joint can compress the artery supplying the limb, and a limb without blood supply has hours, not days.

Check beyond the joint, and note the time:

Colour and warmth. Is the hand or foot pink and warm, or white, blue and cold?
Capillary refill. Press a nail bed for 5 seconds and release. Colour should return in about 2 seconds.
Pulse, if you can find one.
Sensation. Can they feel you touch the fingers or toes?
Movement of the fingers or toes, not the injured joint itself.

Repeat every 10 minutes, and after anything you do.

If nobody is coming at all

Honest, because this is the scenario the app is built for.

A dislocation left unreduced becomes progressively harder to reduce. Muscles spasm around the joint within hours, and after a day or two even a professional would struggle. So unlike a fracture, where waiting costs little, waiting here genuinely closes options.

That creates a real tension, and this page will not resolve it into a technique:

If help is reachable within hours, wait. Support, ice, pain relief, and go.
If help might be reachable within a day or two, still wait, and travel toward it rather than attempting anything.
If help is genuinely never coming, understand what you are choosing between: a permanently disabled joint on one side, and a real risk of permanent nerve or vascular injury on the other. Neither is good, and nobody can tell you from a page which to accept.

What this app will say: the risk of doing it wrong is highest at the shoulder, hip and elbow, where the major nerves and vessels run closest. Fingers and kneecaps are more forgiving. And if anyone within reach has any clinical training, that person is worth a very long walk.

Muscle relaxation is what actually allows reduction, not force. Anyone attempting it who does not understand that will pull harder, which is exactly the mechanism that causes the damage.

Afterwards

Once a joint has dislocated, it is much more likely to do so again, because the supporting structures are stretched or torn. A shoulder that has dislocated once in a young person has a high chance of recurring.

Immobilise for as long as advised, typically a few weeks for a shoulder.
Then strengthen deliberately. The muscles around the joint are what compensate for stretched ligaments, and rehabilitation genuinely reduces recurrence.
Expect it to be vulnerable to the same movement that caused it.
Anyone with a joint that dislocates repeatedly should get it looked at properly while services exist, because it is often fixable and a joint that pops out during a crisis is a serious loss of capability.