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Emergency Medicine’s Original Sin

The job of providing emergency medical services, or EMS, often resembles medical detective work, with limited clues, no specialists to consult, and very little, if any, of the sophisticated equipment available to doctors and nurses. But even though emergency medics—a catchall term used throughout this story for paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and emergency medical responders—handle tens of millions of calls in the United States each year and make life-altering decisions for their patients every day, they remain all but excluded from institutional medicine. “You’re basically like a glorified taxi,” says Sarayna McGuire, a Mayo Clinic emergency physician who has studied pre-hospital…

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 A New First Responder: How Drones May Revolutionize Healthcare

Without a doubt, the use of drone technology in the realm of healthcare services is a promising venture. However, organizations and regulatory leaders will need to ensure the viability, scalability, and efficiency of this technology, and reconcile these aspects with the most crucial elements of healthcare: patient safety, privacy, and autonomy.

Articles of Interest

In the future your ambulance could be driverless

With driverless vehicles already on the road, some governments are looking into the possibility of driverless ambulances. Driverless ambulances and other technology could take some of the strain off the emergency services, freeing paramedics to deal with high-risk patients where each minute waiting for treatment significantly reduces a patient’s chance of surviving.

Paramedics Aren't Just for Emergencies

Home visits for lab tests, IV medications and hospital follow-up.

The Revolution in EMS Care

Thanks to new technology, new life-saving techniques and new missions, ambulance crews are far from the ‘horizontal taxicabs’ they once were.

Three Simple Interventions Increase Survival After A Severe Head Injury, Study Finds

Focusing on adherence to these 3 simple interventions (by paramedics) demonstrated clear efficacy by doubling the survival rate of severe victims of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and tripling the survival rate in those who required a breathing tube to secure their airway (intubation).