Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and Paramedics!
The EMTs are those who step-in to provide immediate medical help for the injured or sick under any emergency medical needs. Patients rely on the quick reaction and treatment of EMTs to protect their lives. In addition to responding emergency calls and carrying out all the necessary medical services, EMTs also involve in transporting patients to medical facilities as and when required. Emergency Medical technician is also known as ambulance technician who are specialized in rendering quality medical services.
Paramedic is clubbed with EMTs, which upon accessing of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) provide patients an advanced medical care. EMT and EMS are linked together in such a way that both of the departments hold the responsibility of entry level patient care providing.
Importance and responsibilities of EMTs/Paramedics
To identify the level of sickness (or the person is actually sick or not) is to perform the needful EMS. Therefore, a complete analysis of a patient’s health should be done by the concerned healthcare professionals. Once it is done, the results will be directed to further treatment purposes such as X-ray scan, biopsy etc. Under intense trauma circumstances (like in case of a vehicle collision), the responders would have to perform triage (assessment of two or more patients critical conditions based on the degree of injuries or illness).
There are two important phases to assess a patient’s health condition. One is to check the consciousness and the other is to perform respiratory test. The final stage is reaffirming pulse rate of the patient. Number of factors will be taken into consideration for this process such as communication, physical simulation, color testing (flushed, pale, jaundiced or bluish), skin temperature (clammy, hot or cold) and perspiration problems.
For the purpose of accountability and recording the patient’s history, SAMPLE (Signs and symptoms, Allergies, Medications, Pertinent past medical history, Last oral intake, Events leading to injury/illness) history will be taken.
Prevention of potential hazards for the most vulnerable patients requires painstaking handling by the health care specialists. Some of the commonly encountered health hazards occur due to the exposure to hazardous materials or toxins or any other highly communicable diseases. Once the Paramedics staffs take charge of such patients, their immediate reaction is to notify the infection control authorities and therefore preventing the spread of harmful injury or germs from dangerous materials.
Yet another primary importance of paramedics is they would notify the emergency department staff in advance (even before admitting the patients in the hospital), thus providing an ample of time for the hospital staffs to make necessary arrangements for the treatment without any delay. The time period also gives enough space to issue potential warning to the medical staff in order to prevent the exposure to hazardous substances and potential spread of disease.
Enabling superfast response rates form the vital importance of EMT and Paramedics. Only out of such response rate can the injured or sickened patients survive long enough to make it to a medical facility or hospital. All the health care professionals working in EMT and Paramedics should main high mental stability. A slight deviation in the attention of medical staffs may escalate emergency situations to a higher degree.
Dispatch process is the final step that holds an utmost importance in directing the panicky callers to appropriate medical help. The National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians states that EMTs and Paramedics have a huge role in the process of establishing emergency medical chain. Some of the EMTs and Paramedics will be employed in call centers for the purpose of communicating with the emergency callers. With respect to the expertise of a particular staff in the calling department, they will be employed to assist the callers over phone providing medical advice such as to initiate CPR or get into any other action before the emergency team arrives.
