Abdus Salam Khan, MD FACP, Aug 2012.
When I wrote the first piece of this series I was not sure how will it be received by the audience. My idea is that people are concerned regarding the care that they get from the medical community and want to see it transform into a better system that have the capability and capacity to deliver acceptable level of care to all citizens of Pakistan regardless of their age, gender, area and ability to pay.
This gives me enough motivation to keep going on educating all medical and non-medical people about the emergency medical services. In this, the first part of our dialogue I am discussing the value and need of EMS.
Emergency medical services comprise of those services that are required by any patients in order to
- Sustain life.
- Stabilize the medical or surgical condition.
- Alleviate the suffering if possible.
So on a broader term any condition that needs to be dealt with in a quicker way should be dealt by providing emergency medical services. Some of these services are obvious and understood easily by the people. These include.
- Chest pain
- Acute difficulty breathing.
- Sudden inability to talk or move
- Intractable pain.
- Confusion.
There are plenty of other conditions that are equally important to be evaluated by a physicians on emergent bases. In fact anything that could be seen by patients or their relatives as alarming should be dealt with on emergent basis.
By this standard it is obvious that there is a significant need for the emergency medical service. In fact any health care delivery is neither complete nor significant unless it creates an optimal level of emergency health care services.
This also explains the value of EMS and Ambulance system as these emergency services deal with the potential life threatening situation. We know that by providing emergency care to people in need we are potentially saving lives and avoiding bad outcome for the people.
In the absence of Ambulance System the potential for loss of life or disability would be enormous. That in itself is an added expense to the people and the health care system. A good Ambulance system is always cost effective, as it prevents catastrophes and avoids expense on a long run. It is also the backbone ion cases of disasters and carastrophies that may be inflicted either by natural means or through man made disasters.
I hope that you find value in this article, your comments are welcome and are significant part of this dialogue.
I could be reached at askhan65@yahoo.com