About Emergency Response Systems

Video Transcript

"The emergency medical system starts the second that somebody calls 911. The dispatch center will take the call and determine the type of priority that it is. For medical problem, ambulance will be dispatched and quite often in most systems the Fire Department and or the Police Department will be dispatched as well. Once on scene, depending on what type of call it is, depends on what level of care you actually need. There's three levels of EMTs throughout the nation, EMT Basics, EMT Intermediates and EMT Paramedics. With paramedics being able to deliver medications, perform EKGs into the patients and do some advanced care. One time scene, we run under the guidance of the medical control physician at the hospital. We have many protocols that are off-line protocols that we can perform without permission and go without training. We also have some protocols for certain types of medication delivered, different types of medications, that we have to call and actually ask the doctor's permission to use. And that's considered on-line medical control. We can call from the scene or when we're en-route to the hospital that we're going to. Either way, whether we need permission to do a certain skill or not, we still have to call the hospital, let them know what's wrong with our patient and how long it is until we're going to be at their door. Once we get there, we bring the patient in and we give report, and the emergency medical system moves on from there."