Coordinating a Ground-Air Intercept: Lessons Learned

This article discusses the steps in creating a ground-air EMS intercept standard operating procedure (SOP). The importance of simultaneously including all response agencies in developing the SOP is highlighted. Lessons learned in resolving SOP development, including misperceptions about when to dispatch air support, identifying landing zones, and the preference for direct ground-air EMS communication rather than using dispatch services are discussed. The article also forecasts how technology advances could further improve the ground-air intercept efficiency. Coordinating a Ground-Air Intercept Communication: Lessons Learned An efficient, coordinated, multi-agency response is critical to improve patient outcomes for time urgent events, such as cardiac arrest, ST Elevated Myocardial Infarction (STEMI), thrombolytic CVA , multi-systems blunt trauma with hypotension etc. (Eisenberg, 2013). The coordination of this response is further complicated in rural settings by factors such as the availability of a paramedic needed to provide higher level care for cardiac events and the long transport times to the nearest definitive care facility (Mell et al., 2017). In an earlier article, we focused on lessons learned from coordinating a tiered response between two EMS services. In a ground-intercept the rural EMS service (with no staffed paramedic) responding to a time urgent event requests assistance from the nearest paramedic-staffed EMS service (Renger, Harness, Souvannasacd, & Gran...
Source: JEMS Operations - Category: Emergency Medicine Tags: Training Exclusive Articles Operations Source Type: news