911 and EMS heroes save lives with Prepared

Editor's Note: this article was originally featured in our LinkedIn Newsletter "Evolving Emergencies". Visit our LinkedIn to subscribe!

Happy EMS Week and thank you to every volunteer and professional EMS practitioner around the country for all that you do!

Today's EMS Week theme, per the official website, is "Save-A-Life Day":

"Thursday is Save-A-Life Day to promote Stop the Bleed, public CPR programs and other programs It doesn’t matter how quickly EMS practitioners get to a scene—bystanders will almost always be there first. Save-A-Life Day empowers the general public to learn and apply steps that can be taken to help save a life. This is an ideal day to schedule community CPR and Stop the Bleed educational courses. Take advantage of the many programs and toolkits available that make it easier to coordinate these programs."

In honor of that, we wanted to share some stories of lifesaving actions taken by 9-1-1 professionals and community members prior to the arrival of EMS practitioners, who then did what they do best and saved lives.

CPR and T-CPR save lives

As referenced in the blurb regarding today's theme, it is incredibly valuable when members of a community know how to perform CPR. According to the American Heart Association, “When CPR begins prior to the arrival of emergency medical services (EMS) personnel, the person in cardiac arrest has a two to three-fold higher likelihood of survival.”

Sometimes, however, the caller and bystanders aren't up-to-date on CPR. In these instances, telecommunicator CPR (T-CPR), or the practice of the 9-1-1 telecommunicator instructing proper CPR over the phone, is crucial. Here's an example from our partners at the Lancaster County Sheriff's Office in Virginia:

"Our Senior Communications Officer Thompsen used Prepared to help perform a T-CPR on a call [and] they were able to get a pulse back before EMS arrived on scene. She was able to instruct the caller how to perform correct CPR, as he was unaware of how to perform CPR. She watched the livestream and told him to speed up, push harder, and recenter his hands. It was amazing to see the technology being used and helping the public."

Great job, SCO Thompsen, and great job to the community member that did an awesome job following her instruction to save a life!

Send a life flight

Urgent medical emergencies require an urgent response. And even though EMS response times are typically incredibly quick, sometimes it's necessary to expedite and upgrade the response by sending a life flight.

Telecommunciator Keith Drury, of the Iowa County Sheriff's Office in Wisconsin, has recently used Prepared technology to quickly get life flights off the ground twice in recent months:

"I used Prepared for a call from a person with a cut to their arm from a saw blade on a weed whacker. Once I was able to go live [with video], I could see the patients wound, amount of blood loss, and them starting to go in and out of consciousness. Because of this I was able to get Med-Flight in the air right away, and advise of the situation.

"I also used prepared for a MVA (motor vehicle accident), a car against a bus, and found out that it was a head-on crash, not a rear-ended crash. So, again, I got the Med-Flight launched early because of the situational awareness provided."

Both of these incidents resulted in lives being saved. Great job, Keith!

The value of EMD protocols

EMD stands for Emergency Medical Dispatch (or dispatcher). Per our partners at LETA911, EMD enables the, "gathering [of] information related to medical emergencies and the delivery of medical instructions by voice, prior to the arrival of EMS."

Recently, at Pasquotank-Camden 911 in North Carolina, a telecommunicator was able to execute EMD protocols using Prepared technology after the caller's cell service dropped.

"She went through our entire EMD Protocol along with using the Stroke DX. I think she did an amazing job getting the information for our EMS responders," said Asst. Director Ruth Barefoot.

Great job, Pasquotank-Camden 911 team!

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Thank you again to all of the amazing EMS practitioners that serve their communities around the country. We are greatly indebted to you and your sacrifices do not go unnoticed.

Please visit EMS Week Website to learn more about how you can celebrate for the rest of the week.