I was sitting in the break room a couple days ago, the television was on and as I was eating I heard a reporter talking about a man who died as a result of being stabbed. The man called 911, police officers arrived but no ambulance. The reporter did not say how long the officer and man were waiting, however the officer ended up calling for backup and requesting an ambulance. The response was “There are no available ambulances near you. It should be about 20 minutes.” Getting to the point of this post, this man lost his life.
How would you feel if you called for an ambulance and it wasn’t available for you?
Washington D.C has been experiencing a shortage of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) for the past year. The required paramedic number for the District of Columbia is 300 and there are currently only 245 (Novak, 2013). Current paramedics have been working overtime shifts daily in an effort to compensate for the shortage of employees. To make matters worse, only one third of D.C’s operating ambulances have a paramedic on board.
This lack of paramedics is hampering the efficiency of EMS for the district. Response times, patient care are suffering and the number of vacancies continue to grow because of the amount of stressed placed on current employees. This shortage of workers
Imagine how of an impact this shortage has on EMS needed situations. This reduces the amount of help that can be provided at emergency scenes. Lives can be lost because the appropriate help was not able to get there on time (Wagner, 2015). The District of Columbia grows in population by nearly 800 people monthly. The District is also a very popular tourist area and a lot of people come in for work. During the time of 8am-7pm are times where there are peaks in the need of emergency services.
What type of intervention or program would you suggest in order to better accommodate this health concern in Washington D.C?
World Socialist: Washington DC faces shortage of emergency response vehicles (Trent Novak, 2015)
WTTG: DC struggling with ambulance shortage in the city http://www.fox5dc.com/news/local-news/16443467 (Paul Wagner, 2015)