ALL ABOUT NOTHING

                CHICAGO EMS  REPSONSE TO "SICK PERSON " A 911 call is for when someone is in immediate danger or has been injured and needs help right away. The police, firefighters and paramedics are there to provide assistance in an emergency. Frustratingly, not everyone defines ‘emergency’ the same way, as today’s three examples of 911 calls highlight. All three patients were suffering from abdominal pain, but their situations had some stark differences. Let’s start with a 62-year-old patient who was in such pain he could barely stand up. Emergency personnel started ALS and BLS care while establishing the circumstances of his pain. It had begun as gas, but for the last 24 hours the gentleman had been feeling cold, diaphoretic (sweating heavily) and experiencing an increasing amount of abdominal pain. The patient had arrived back from traveling two weeks ago, so the paramedics questioned him about where he had bee...

You never know what to expect When you work as an after-hours emergency responder, you never know what your next night shift is going to throw at you. Each 911 call that come in could be anything from a crank call to a major incident. To uncover more of what goes on after dark, we’ve been speaking with eme rgency services personnel from the Midwest about what their jobs entail. Today, we’re covering a few examples to show the sheer variety of 911 calls that these brave individuals receive. First up is a mother who called 911 after her child suffered an allergic reaction to something they had eaten. The mother was quick to spot her child’s red marks and rash, so administered an epi-pen for three seconds before calling for emergency medical assistance. Chicago’s firefighters were the first to arrive on the scene, so we are assessing the patient when the emergency medical services arrived. The Chicago Bureau of Operations reports that many of its 4,500 paramedics and...