Captain Kevin Haight, Commander of Statewide Emergency Communications in Idaho, talks about his master's thesis on the reclassification of emergency dispatchers, including why the current classification is a problem and what steps need to be taken to fix it...
Jennifer Chap, co-founder of BuddyCPR and StrataVerve, discusses sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) from a caller's perspective. She talks about the experience she had when her husband went into SCA and shares the findings of her research and work to improve public awareness and understanding of this topic...
DOES USE OF THE COMPRESSIONS MONITOR DIAGNOSTIC TOOL BY EMDs ENHANCE THE ABILITY OF CALLERS TO PERFORM CPR? Yes! When used with Pre-Arrival Instructions, the Tool significantly improves callers' ability to achieve high-performance CPR compression rates. The earlier, the better. Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is both pervasive and deadly. The American Heart Association (AHA) estimates more than 356,000 OHCAs occur in the United States per year. Of these cases, about 90% are fatal. Bystander CPR can save the life of an OHCA patient—however, time is of the essence. It has been said that...
Dr. Dan Cox, Board President of the Utah Chapter of the American Heart Association (AHA), discusses the AHA's objectives, how community outreach can still function during the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether compressions-only CPR is effective...
Brett Patterson, Chair of the Medical Council of Standards for the IAED, discusses Proposals for Change (PFCs), a key part of the process of protocol evolution that keeps it as up-to-date as possible. He explains how PFCs came about, what makes a compelling proposal, and some common mistakes made when submitting one...
Adrianne Miller, QA/QI and ETC instructor for Ford County 911 Communications, discusses dealing with suicide calls in rural areas, whether from the callers themselves or from people reporting the aftermath. She talks about her own personal experiences with these calls and the resources emergency dispatchers can use...
Samantha Hawkins, communications officer with Cobb County 911 in Marietta, Georgia, discusses the role of customer service in emergency dispatch, bias in the dispatch center, and what it's like to be a woman of color working in 911...
In 2003 the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch® (IAED™) created the Severe Respiratory Infection (SRI) Tool in response to the SARS pandemic that year, when multiple cases were reported in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Then in 2009, an electronic version of the tool was developed for ProQA® dispatch software and deployed in multiple dispatch agencies during the 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. This tool was later modified in response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014 and became what is known today as the Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance (EIDS) Tool. The EIDS Tool enables EMS...
Janell Farr, president, and Jenean Hansen, head of programs and operations, discuss their nonprofit the All Clear Foundation, whose aim is to improve the health and wellbeing of first responders through resources like a peer-to-peer app, a mobile wellness tool, and a robust resource database...
Kate Jennings, executive director of Wellington Free Ambulance Clinical Communication Center in New Zealand, discusses her center's programs to text PDIs and PAIs to patients and do welfare checks...