Situational awareness (SA, also called
situation awareness) is the ability to take in
relevant information about an event in order to
understand it and take effective action.
Maintaining effective SA as an emergency
medical dispatcher (EMD) may be more
difficult than in other, similarly complex roles
because of the remote nature of an
emergency call for help.
Despite long-standing calls for consistent
training practices, very little is known about
the methods used in emergency dispatcher
training, their relative efficacy, or the topics or
competencies addressed.
Cardiovascular disease remains the most common cause
of death worldwide, with ischemic heart disease (IHD)
causing nearly nine million deaths per year. Coronary heart
disease (CHD) is estimated to cause about one-third of
all deaths in people over 35 years old, and the incidence
of CHD is expected to continue to rise. Acute myocardial
infarctions (AMIs)—heart attacks—represent a significant
portion of this overall CHD mortality, with approximately
620,000 Americans suffering a first heart attack, and
295,000 suffering a repeat event, each year.
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...
