Committee Goal

“During this generation and continuing for future generations, everyone in Sri Lanka will have access to trained pre-hospital medical personnel, ambulances are available to transport the sick and injured safely to hospitals, complications from harmful or inadequate pre-hospital care is eliminated so physician and nursing personnel at hospitals are delivered patients they are able to professionally treat and rehabilitate back to society as contributing citizens.”

Introduction

The goal of Pre-Hospital Emergency Care is to reduce preventable death and disability by integrating pre-hospital care into a functional trauma system. Pre-Hospital care is an essential, core component of trauma system. Pre-hospital care has been demonstrated to reduce death from trauma by up to 33%.

Emergency medical services system consists of a team of pre-hospital care providers including Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT). EMTs are professionally trained to provide basic life support, emergency treatment, rescue, and safe transport of the patient to the hospital. An EMS System not only provides emergency treatment during transportation of the patient to the hospital, but is also a critical bridge between the location of emergencies and the hospital’s medical staff.

In this system every team member, from the first responder and the EMT on the ambulance to the hospital nurses and doctors, have a well defined role in the care of the sick and injured. A functional system, with all members working together, improves the patient’s outcome and restoring the quality of life. Often, the most critical interventions that determine a patients long term quality of life and survival are the interventions done at the scene of the emergency or within the first hour, this is referred as the golden hour of patient care.

Everyone in Sri Lanka should have the basic knowledge on how to open an airway, stop severe bleeding, and splint a fractured bone. Currently, many organizations in Sri Lanka are providing this education.

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