Treating Patients in Austere, Remote Settings

Considerations when treating patients in austere, remote settings
You glance over at your partner who’s driving to the call and ask if he knows where he’s going. He tells you he knows the area but not the location of the specific address. He thinks you’re still about 20 minutes away.
You look back at the map and locate the trailhead where the caller is supposed to meet you. A 24-year-old male riding an ATV meets you at a trail marker. You key the microphone to let dispatch know you’ve made contact and you hear, “Last unit repeat, unreadable.”
You repeat your transmission and dispatch responds with the time. As the search and rescue (SAR) team arrives, the man tells you his dad crashed his ATV about five miles up the trail. He tells you his dad is “bleeding bad” and his brothers are still with him.
After adding extra dressings and confirming you have a tourniquet in your first in bag, you grab a portable oxygen tank and a blanket. You get on the back of the ATV and, followed by one of the SAR team members, head up the trail. The plan is for you to assess the patient and situation and then let your partner and the rest of the SAR team know what you need.
After a 15-minute ride up a rugged trail, you find John, a 55-year-old man, lying under a tree with two younger men next to him. John’s clothes are saturated with blood and there’s a notable amount of blood around the area. The two younger men, John’s sons, have a significant amount of blood on them and ha...

Source: JEMS Patient Care - January 1, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Dennis Edgerly, EMT-P Tags: Patient Care Columns Source Type: news