Medical emergency

“ About forty million Americans are afflicted with medical problems which are difficult to identify in an emergency situation. One simple but important step that people with special medical problems can take to protect themselves and to enhance the effectiveness of emergency medical care is to register with a medic alert service. ”

“ Two groups of dedicated Americans provide this kind of medical care: emergency department personnel, who provide care in trauma centers, and emergency medical technicians and paramedics, most of them volunteers, who provide prehospital emergency care.
These emergency medical personnel throughout our Nation are specialists trained to handle illnesses and injuries which threaten life or limb. They must be available daily on a 24-hour basis to all patients who need medical aid. The efforts of these trained men and women have saved thousands of lives. ”

“ For nearly 25 years, these special identification and information services have been helping health and rescue personnel meet the unique emergency needs of people with diabetes, heart conditions, epilepsy, allergies and other hidden medical problems. The medic alert tag that the victim of a medical emergency wears and the information service with which that person is registered can spell the difference between survival and death. Each year, medical alert identification and emergency information systems save the lives of more than two thousand people who have hidden medical conditions. ”

“ We salute the Nation's emergency medical services personnel: those who staff the ambulances, those who provide medical control, and those physicians and nurses in the trauma centers whose daily efforts are devoted to emergency medicine. We all depend upon their skills and dedication. ”

“ Week, we express our gratitude for the hundreds of thousands of skilled personnel who help save lives in communities across the United States each year. Through the hard work and dedication of these career and volunteer first responders, Americans receive the finest emergency medical treatment in their most vulnerable moments. ”

“ In this emergency service there should be utilized all available physicians such as school and factory physicians, volunteers, practitioners on a paid basis, fourth year medical students, etc. This service should cover all calls reported as unreached by private physicians or received through other channels, and should be co-ordinated with the special nursing service, being provided with automobile transportation, machines being hired if necessary.
3. The emergency medical service should be used to select cases needing hospital care. ”

“ We salute our Nation's emergency medical services providers. Their daily efforts affect millions of men, women, and children who suffer from acute illness or injury by returning them to productive lives. ”

“ The medical service provides treatment and preventive medicine for military personnel and, in certain circumstances, for dependents and for persons employed by the military. Its services are also available to the public at large during individual emergencies, if they are the most immediately available, and on a larger scale during epidemics or natural disasters. Military personnel may also avail themselves of emergency facilities in nonmilitary hospitals or clinics. ”

“ Emergency medical services personnel provide a vital public service 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Traumatic injury is the leading cause of death and disability for men, women, and children between the ages of 1 and 44 years. ”

“ Whether they are assisting during natural disasters or providing lifesaving care after car accidents, heart attacks, sports injuries, or violent crime, EMS personnel respond to tens of millions of requests for help each year in our country. ”

“ For the first an emergency case, similar to that in use in England, Germany, and other Red Cross Treaty Nations, and this has been adapted to Red Cross needs and methods under the direct supervision of the Medical Board of the Red Cross Hospital. It contains material and surgical dressings of the best class known to modern surgery. A most valuable part of the permanent equipment of this emergency case is a series of emergency charts, arranged for instantaneous reference, giving simple brief instructions for dealing with every conceivable case of accident, pending the arrival of the doctor. ”

“ Effective mass casualty management requires careful planning. The guide is designed to support such planning by providing medical planners and staff personnel with a systematic means for estimating the number of biological casualties. However, casualty management also involves practice of self-aid and buddy aid, on-site triage and emergency care, decontamination, transport to medical facilities, infection control measures, communications, health services, logistics, and evacuation by ground or air transportation. ”

“ Emergency medical care, like other elements of our Nation's health care system, depends for its effectiveness on the support of the American people. By contributing to the lifesaving capabilities of rescue personnel and other health professionals, we improve our prospects for continued good health. ”

“ According to the Archives of Internal Medicine, most heart attack patients wait more than 2 hours before seeking emergency care, primarily because they do not recognize the symptoms of a heart attack. Delayed awareness of the onset of a heart attack means that only one in five heart attack victims gets to the hospital quickly enough to benefit from life-saving medical treatments. ”

“ Inclusive emergency medical systems play a significant role in reducing mortality and disability due to injuries. Quality emergency medical care saves lives and reduces disability by linking pre-hospital, hospital, and rehabilitation services that provide optimal care for all Americans. ”

“ They are also teaching individuals what to do if an emergency strikes. Many firefighters who are also trained as paramedics and emergency medical technicians are helping to save lives by instructing citizens in first aid—including cardiopulmonary resuscitation. ”

“ In cases of trying emergency, when medical assistance is not at hand, it will be found a safe guide, the symptoms of diseases being clearly defined, and their appropriate remedies plainly pointed out.”—Essex Standard. ”

“ Section 1102 Definitions As used in this part:
(1) "Emergency health services" means medical and dental care for the civilian population in all of their specialties and adjunct therapeutic fields, and the planning, provision, and operation of first aid stations, hospitals, and clinics; preventive health services, including detection, identification and control of communicable diseases, their vectors, and other public health hazards, inspection and control of purity and safety of food, drugs, and biologicals; vital statistics services ”

“ Day or night, in every city, suburb, rural community, or wilderness area, our Nation relies upon EMS providers to respond to every kind of emergency situation to save lives and reduce suffering. In January, when more than 70 tornadoes touched down in Georgia and Mississippi, injuring many, EMS responders were there to help. ”

“ SERIOUS PHYSICAL INJURY.— The term “serious physical injury” means an injury that— `` (A) is life threatening; `` (B) results in permanent impairment of a body function or permanent damage to a body structure; or `` (C) necessitates medical or surgical intervention to preclude permanent impairment of a body function or permanent damage to a body structure. ́ ́.
Sec. 3. Covered Countermeasure Process. ”

“ Consider first the average American household, where the family physician cannot call every day. Not a day finds this household without the need of information in medicine or hygiene or sanitation. More efforts of the profession are thwarted by ignorance than by epidemic. Not to supplant the doctor, but to supplement him, carefully prepared information should be at hand on the hygiene of health—sanitation, diet, exercise, clothing, baths, etc.; on the hygiene of disease—nursing and sick-room conduct, control of the nervous and insane, emergency resources, domestic remedies ”

“ We commend these efforts to develop innovative new treatments, advance and adapt medical skills, establish stronger professional standards, and promote public education and health. This week, we thank our EMS professionals for their sustained commitment to excellence and dedication to service, and share our hopes for a bright future that will make us all safer and healthier. ”

“ As in any medical endeavor, prevention is fare more efficacious than treatment. This is true for wounds sustained in war. Unfortunately, there is no precedent to suggest that man and nations have learned to coexist without armed conflict. ”

“ As will be seen by the consultation of any hospital record, the deaths in these various operations have been, in adults, from one in three to one in every four cases—a very large percentage, and sufficient to deter any sufferer from undergoing an operation except for the relief of a condition which is in itself worse than death. ”

“ He had ample field for his energy in emergency operations of surgery, and obstetrics, and his services were much appreciated. Although, so far as I know, he never sent in a bill, his patients seldom forgot him at Christmastide, and on his leaving the district to take up his duties as professor of surgery in Galway they presented him with an address and a handsome monetary gift. When not engaged in professional work he was always to be found in his workshop, well fitted up with lathes and tools for fine work, many being of his own contrivance and design. ”

“ You do not want a medicine chest to contain everything you may require. You want it to contain everything that is absolutely necessary for emergencies. There are practically three classes of emergencies—injuries, acute poisoning, and acute disease.
The surgical part of the box is far more important than the medical part. Let us talk about injuries first. Bleeding requires instantaneous treatment. If a person wounds a big vessel, she may bleed to death in half a minute or less. So you must act at once if you wish to be of any value. ”

“ Again, the physician cannot come on time to save life, limb, or looks to the victim of many a serious accident. And yet some bystander could usually understand and apply plain rules for inducing respiration, applying a splint, giving an emetic, soothing a burn or the like, so as to safeguard the sufferer till the doctor's arrival—if only these plain rules were in such compact form that no office, store, or home in the land need be without them. ”

“ The frequency of accidents of all kinds, injuries sustained by machinery, contusions, drowning, poisoning, fainting, etc., and also of sudden attacks of painful diseases, such as headache, affections of the heart and nerves, inflammation of the eye, ear and other organs, renders it necessary that non-professionals should possess sufficient knowledge to enable them to employ the proper means for speedy relief. ”

“ Today, the person stricken with a heart attack has a much better chance of surviving the acute episode, thanks to continued improvement in diagnosis and treatment. More and more of the stricken are reaching the hospital alive, thanks to better recognition of ominous symptoms, widespread teaching of cardiopulmonary resuscitation by the American Red Cross and the American Heart Association, and better-equipped emergency vehicles with better-trained crews. ”

“ I am sorry to add, in this place, that the number of patients in the HOSPITAL, and incurables in the ALMSHOUSE of this city, show that we are treading in the enervated steps of our fellow subjects in Britain. Our bills of mortality likewise show the encroachments of British diseases upon us. The NERVOUS FEVER has become so familiar to us, that we look upon it as a natural disease. ”

“ A mass casualty situation is presented when the number of casualties exceeds the capabilities of medical personnel at the location to provide needed care at the incident site. Treatment at the incident site is limited to life- or limb-saving care. Patients that can survive are evacuated to the nearest MTF with a patient decontamination capability. ”

“ Critical care medicine is a newly defined term that describes a category of medical treatments for patients who are in life threatening situations and require immediate care. Coronary, respiratory, neonatal, trauma, and intensive care units are elements of critical care medicine. Patients may need such critical care after auto or boat accidents, heart attack, stroke, industrial injuries, or as a result of premature birth. ”

“ Surgeons, assistant surgeons, contract physicians, ward-masters, nurses, passed and re-passed; stretchers filed into the dead house; coffins were being unloaded and piled under a shed; a constant stream of people entered and left the apothecary's office; the Division Medical Director's premises were besieged. Ambulances continually drove up or departed; files of sick and wounded, able to move without assistance, stood in line, patient, uncomplaining men, bloody, ragged, coughing, burning with fever, weakened for lack of nourishment ”

“ In Casualty Clearing and Base Hospitals there are, of course, always a number of sick to be visited, and this work falls within the region of ordinary civilian hospital work. In many cases where a man is first hit and he is not in a too collapsed condition, his first thought is of home; and a painful anxiety is often evinced by the sufferer to get a message through, describing his condition, before his name appears in the casualty list ”