Paramedics Essay

“Should paramedics be able to declare and call time of death on casualties before they reach a hospital/doctor?”

A paramedic’s first job when arriving at the scene of an accident is to categorise patients from lowest to highest casualties according to their status and injuries. When a person suddenly becomes ill or is injured in an accident, they must receive medical treatment immediately. There are people called “Emergency Medical Technicians” (EMTs) or paramedics who are trained to apply First Aid and administer on-site emergency care. The duties of EMTs and paramedics are very similar, but paramedics are trained to deliver more advanced care than EMTs are.

The SA Ambulance Service Mission Statement is: To save lives, reduce suffering and enhance quality of life, through the provision of accessible and responsive quality patient care and transport.

This shows that the SA, and all other States’ Ambulance Officers and Paramedics have a duty to keep a person alive as best they can. They are trained to assess and treat patients in a wide range of locations, but generally this will be in their homes without necessarily having to attend a hospital emergency department.

When they arrive, the paramedic has to assess the patient's state and whether it is an illness or they are suffering an injury. They will then provide the emergency treatment. They have a range of equipment to help them to monitor the person’s pulse, breathing and heart rate, as well as defibrillators and drugs that will assist them to maintain life. After treatment if the patient is alive, they will transport them to a hospital for further treatment.

In simple terms there are three main groupings:

a. Recognition of Death,

b. Assessment of the Extinction o...

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...er life preserving care no matter what.

As seen above, in most cases there is no doubt if the person is dead, and even then the EMT/Paramedic cannot sign it if.

Supporting Evidence:

In most cases this training is the same, or linked to the Nursing degree. As seen above, a nurse can declare that a patient’s life has expired, but an EMT/paramedic can only assess that they have died, and make a decision to stop, or not resuscitate.

From the Victorian incident they changed the guidelines for Terminating Resuscitation Efforts in the Field, above and expanded it to include the use of the new advanced airway testing equipment in ambulances now. This testing equipment allows the EMT/paramedic to confirm that the patient’s body is circulating the oxygen and moving the carbon dioxide out of the body. If this is not happening it confirms that the patient has not survived.