Weary of working as a Paramedic

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Wednesday, 23 February, 2022

Paramedic

Paramedic based on Wikipedia Bahada Indonesia is a profession that provides pre-hospital and emergency medical services. The study itself is called paramedicine. Paramedics use ambulances to carry out their duties to visit event scenes that require medical assistance for accidents, or another emergency medical/health assistance service.

Abroad, Paramedics are also known as "field medics". Paramedics can come from private or state health/emergency services, Paramedics can come from Fire Department, Ambulance services, Search and Rescue (SAR) teams, military, police, etc.

In Indonesia, paramedics are not yet recognized as a professional profession and do not yet have a clear definition.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many paramedics have been assigned to assist hospitals in carrying out extraordinary emergency response conditions. While assisting with the pandemic, paramedics shall remain on standby to provide first aid to traffic accidents.

With the limited scope of paramedics, unlike nurses in hospitals, paramedics are indeed tasked with carrying out emergency responses, be at traffic accidents, building fires, or emergency response to natural disasters.

With the limited numbers of paramedics employed by the hospital, if a concurrent emergency response event occurs and results in a large number of injured, this situation demands paramedics stay focused.

Emergency response

Emergency response is an extraordinary event that results in casualties, damage to objects and nature. Paramedics are arguably only needed when there are emergency response conditions. When there is no call for emergency, the paramedics are still ready and prepare all the equipment that must be carried in the ambulance.

In an emergency response event, fatalities can be categorized based on the Trauma Triage and Score which can be linked at https://patient.info/doctor/trauma-triage-and-scoring.

Based on these standards, victims can be categorized into:

Priority 1 (P1) or Triage 1 (T1): urgent care required – requires immediate life-saving intervention. Color code red.

P2 or T2: intermediate or urgent care required - requires significant intervention within two to four hours. Yellow color code.

P3 or T3: delayed treatment - requires medical care but this can be safely deferred. Green color code.

Dead is the fourth classification and it is important to prevent the expenditure of limited resources on those who are outside aid. Black color code.

In actual conditions, there are many possible combinations of events and the combination of the severity of the victim and the number.

In day to day, paramedics are always required to be ready to respond to all possible events no matter the existing workloads, fatigue for being standby, or being assisted to support the Covid-1 pandemic. There is a possibility that an emergency occurs after the paramedic’s duty-off, and requesting he/she to support the on-duty paramedics to respond at scenes.

Not to mention the burden of the victim's angry family members, or the burden of the paramedic's family issues.

Where are the Paramedics

In Indonesia, a small number of paramedics work in hospitals, to support emergency response services, either public or private, including support companies that need services for medical emergency response.

Globally, most paramedics work hand-in-hand with firefighters or medical emergency service providers.

In extraordinary conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic, paramedics were also assigned to carry out emergency care and response to patients who had to be evacuated to hospitals for intensive care.

Paramedics in carrying out emergency medical action will be the first to see the condition of the victim, face risks at the emergency site while also having to focus on taking first aid measures to the victim. Therefore, paramedics have to make a decision (with virtual support from the doctor through telemedicine), to decide which victims go first and which victims are stabilized on-site (Trauma Triage and Score). A huge moral feeling, wrong decision due to missed assessment, loss of the victim’s life.

A day with paramedics, a job full of responsibility and moral burden, and not everyone can do.