Medical Crosstraining?

[emtdan]

If this has been asked before, please direct me, as I could not find it in a search.
I am an EMT affiliated with a fire department, but am also a Rescue Diver...
This is in relation to a question on an EMS forum...
I am curious, among the PSD world, how many divers are cross trained as EMTs or Paramedics?
Do you hold medical training/certification? Do you/can you render care to patients trapped underwater other then extrication?

I appreciate your responses,


DES

 

[tc]

EMT & DMT. On Crew at the Catalina Hyperbaric chamber, instruct all the DAN courses.

edit- BTW- primary intent in the cert's I've gotten is not to help the public so much, It's to help our guys if they should ever have a problem.

 

[Gary D.]

If this has been asked before, please direct me, as I could not find it in a search.
I am an EMT affiliated with a fire department, but am also a Rescue Diver...
This is in relation to a question on an EMS forum...
I am curious, among the PSD world, how many divers are cross trained as EMTs or Paramedics?
Do you hold medical training/certification? Do you/can you render care to patients trapped underwater other then extrication?

I appreciate your responses,


DES

We need to concentrate on just getting victims to the surface. Being trapped underwater is more Hollywood than reality. I know it happens a lot in the movies and especially on Soap Operas (the wife watches).

It has happened but is so rare where a diver would have the time, room, equipment and dexterity to do any treatment sub surface. Time would be much better spent getting victim(s) directly to the surface.

I have heard of teams that train to do deco or safety stops with victims from deep submergence recoveries in Rescue mode. That is not time well spent. Get them to the surface and handed over to the medical personal who have what they need at hand and are in a proper place to use it.

Gary D.

 

[bridgediver]

Everyone on our team is an EMT-P, by default. We are a combined service and as such most of the dept has been hired as a paramedic for a number of years (late-80's).
This has no bearing at all on how our team runs. If we need medical, we call an ambulance crew (or better yet have them standing by already). The team does the water stuff, the guys on the ambulances do the ambulance stuff. Theres enough on the plate already for the team to accomplish.
We do take pre-dive and post dive BP's and have a demand reg O2 set-up but other than that what's on the ambulance is good enough

Having said that, most EMS types don't know much about diving injuries or how to handle a drowning victim. I'd like to think that our service is on the plus side of this as we have the divers combined with the medics

Agree with Gary. Getting them to the surface is really the only treatment the dive team can ever do.

 

[BladesRobinson]

I agree with both Gary and Bridgediver!

Providing EMS treatment underwater is not what "we" train for. We are lucky enough to be able to locate a victim and get them to the surface soon enough for them to be resuscitated. By the time the incident is reported, goes through dispatch, the divers respond and arrive on scene, a "last seen point" is established and the victim is located, there isn't any time left to goof around underwater to do a patient assessment and start some type of underwater treatment. It just isn't going to happen that way (except in Hollywood).

Locating the victim quickly, getting the victim to the surface and onshore quickly, THEN starting A.L.S. procedures is the standard protocol for modern Public Safety Dive Teams. With good fortune, and luck, some victims live and have a second chance at life.

In Indian River County (FL), all members of the dive team are EMTs (minimum) some are paramedics and most have attended a 20 hour Med Dive program through Dive Rescue International.

Blades Robinson

 

[Desert Pirate]

Most of our Dive team is at least a first responder EMT, however there are several who are EMT basics. but like most of the others on this thread have said its by default. As SAR we dont only focus on Diving... we focus on avalanche Recovery, ground search Techniques, Technical Rope Rescue, and other teams of expertise that might better utilize our EMS liscences. As divers, we usually are in Recovery Mode, and there is not alot of medical attn. we can preform, and if there is, we have a fully equiped ambulance that our friends from the fire dept. bring to take a patient off our hands. : )