Not a bad idea, but we don't need a "fire" department, we need EMS people. Truth is 80% of our calls are medical calls and not fires. When there is a structure fire because of response times and limited manpower they're not going to save your home, they're going to save the home next door.
What do we need in my opinion?
It would be great to have paramedics in every neighborhood with an 8 minute average response time, but we can't. If you check the survival rate of patients treated by a paramedic and an EMT are about the same. The paramedic survival rate a little better in cardiac arrest, and EMT survival rate a little better in trauma. I assume the paramedic cardiac survival rate relies on rapid response that we don't have. One thing I beleive is nobody should die alone....
We need people trained in patient assessment to respond from home and assess the patient in a reasonable time. They don't need to be an EMT or a paramedic they just need to be trained to assess the patient and report what they find.
Take the patients blood pressure, it's not rocket science. Take their pulse, is it regular or irregular? Again not rocket science. Look at the patient's pupils, are they equal? Do they react to light?
Changes in EMS....
What an EMT or paramedic can do in an emergency and what a layperson can do hasn't caught up with changes in the law.
There are so many things a layperson with proper training can do today to help someone in a medical emergency. In Arizona a layperson can give Narcan a medication that can reverse an opioid overdose in minutes. A layperson can also give Epinephrine in case of anaphylactic shock from a nut or other allergic reaction.
During my CPR class and my EMR training we were told over and over if you're a paramedic, EMT or EMR and stop at an accident or medical emergency off duty to ONLY do first aid and not use any of your skills above that level.
Sadly the paramedics who did the training didn't know that Arizona had passed a Good Samaritan Law some time back. The law is pretty specific that anyone including EMTs and paramedics who render aid are protected unless guilty of gross negligence.
I often wonder how many serious accidents these guys had driven by thinking this was true....
32-1471. Health care provider and any other person; emergency aid; nonliability
Any health care provider licensed or certified to practice as such in this state or elsewhere, or a licensed ambulance attendant, driver or pilot as defined in section 41-1831, or any other person who renders emergency care at a public gathering or at the scene of an emergency occurrence gratuitously and in good faith shall not be liable for any civil or other damages as the result of any act or omission by such person rendering the emergency care, or as the result of any act or failure to act to provide or arrange for further medical treatment or care for the injured persons, unless such person, while rendering such emergency care, is guilty of gross negligence.
All I hear from paramedics around here is "you can't do that". I'm sorry but in a rural area like ours we need to do, what we need to do, in order to save a live without waiting an hour for help to arrive.
Nobody should die alone....
When your life is in danger you really don't care if it's a hillbilly in a pickup truck or a paramedic in an ambulance that shows up, as long as somebody come to help.
We need volunteers to respond from home and do rapid patient assessment. If you can have a medical helicopter in route so transport times are less than ground transport, that makes sense.
All too often our EMS people call a medical helicopter that will take over an hour to arrive, load, and transport the patient to Las Vegas when KRMC in Kingman is 30 minutes away.
This doesn't make sense unless the patient needs a level one trauma center. Truth is KMRC can handle most patients. It's faster transport, better patient care, and keeping thousands of dollars in the community rather than send it to Vegas.
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