231–240 of 328 posts
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At least in my area, King County area, a call of severe chest pain would immediately get units rolling code (lights+sirens) for CHEST PAIN. Pulse point, which works in our area, would also start paging BLS certified people in the neighborhood who have the app. When I've called 911, the dispatchers grilled me going right down the list of signs and symptoms and did an excellent triage job. I'm a volunteer EMT / FF at a…
FWIW, Seattle is famously one of the top cities in which to have a serious medical emergency. Very fast response and state-of-the-art care.
This is horrible. What is going on in Toronto that ambulances take 30 minutes to respond?
Link (Spanish): https://www.elespanol.com/alicante/vega-baja/20251028/hijo-c...
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Every time I give this opinion I’m labeled as an a to science/anti vaxxer. Hopefully this context will help: I have virus induced asthma where even a simple cold can have me gasping for breath. I took every precaution imaginable before the vaccines were available, stayed home, got groceries delivered, masked up when I did have to go somewhere, asked my wife to retire from working in the school system as a special nee…
> But let’s not pretend that many of the precautions and policies weren’t performative. Mask mandates were always dumb. Most people didn’t wear effective masks and many didn’t cover their noses. We have specific evidence that not masking and not distancing caused superspreader events . Before there were too many cases, contact tracing backwards showed that specific parties, weddings, etc. were responsible for acceler…
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Sounds like Hatzolah Melbourne, https://hatzolah.org.au since 1994 Since 1998, in Melbourne for anything that might need a defibrillator a fire engine is sent at the same time as the ambulance (EMR Emergency Medical Response Program). https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2002/177/6/cardiac-arrests-tr... Medical Journal of Australia article. There is also GoodSAM https://www.ambulance.vic.gov.au/goodsam/ for individual help…
What about helicopters? Does Melbourne not have/use theirs in those cases or is the system just overwhelmed? Asking because (different country) when we had a person present with stroke symptoms and called 911, they sent both an ambulance and the helicopter. The heli came first but it had to land a ways off on a field and they had to walk over and basically arrived around the same time as the ambulance. A couple minut…
A helicopter seems like it would be pretty useless for landing in an urban area. I can't imagine winching is risk-free or would save much time, and you can probably put many more ambulances on the ground for the cost of a single air ambulance.
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Wow. I didn’t know that things are this way. I am a recent immigrant living close to the city and always seem to be able to see a GP on the same day. Is that because I have private insurance and I pay out of pocket anyways? If I were a citizen, I wouldn’t be able to go to those places (at least for “free healthcare”), and will have the same wait times? Or is it geography dependent with rural Victoria having issues an…
It depends on the location and it depends on what services you're after. If you have private healthcare insurance, you get to skip the wait times at hospitals and get a choice of public or private hospitals. For clinics, it's a different story and can get quite detailed. The private insurance can help you with the payment there but not wait times. For some regional and rural locations, the wait times can be better or…
That must be a great deal for the insurance company. If it takes multiple years to get an appointment, they must pay out significantly less claims as well.
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Melbourne has an excellent ambulance response time (defined from the moment 000 call is received to when the first ambulance resource arrives on scene): * Average Code 1 response time: 12 minutes 47 seconds * Code 1 responses within 15 minutes: 77.2% * Number of Code 1 first responses: 12,375 This places Melbourne among the faster councils in the state, and well ahead of the statewide average response time. Source: T…
Perhaps my understanding here is lacking, but that doesn't sound good at all. Feels like if someone has some sort of cardiac event, or, worse, isn't breathing, by the time the ambulance gets there, they'll be dead, with too much brain death for any resuscitation effort to be worth it.
Sadly, A heart attack can be fatal even with immediate medical intervention at a hospital. A defibrillator can only correct certain kinds of abnormal heart electrical activity.
In my experience as soon as the dispatcher understands it's a medical problem, has confirmed the address and that the patient is not breathing, they will begin talking the caller through performing CPR.
I suppose if I was concerned about it, the burden would be on me to move somewhere closer to the hospital or wherever the ambulance stages between calls. Unfortunqtely, there's always a chance no ambulance is available or that an accident has blocked the road.
How soon do you believe assistance should arrive?