Pre-hospital care is a crucial part of healthcare that is provided by emergency medical responders. It is a developing and exciting area of emergency medicine that encompasses a variety of domains aside from what many may believe as just simply “load and go” transportation of patients to healthcare facilities. Rather, it includes ambulance and emergency practice, medical rescue, prehospital physician response and medical direction, retrieval medicine, dispatch and communications, telemedicine, trauma and even disaster medicine. Perhaps this is also one of the areas wherein medicine interacts with other emergency authorities such as fire service, police and the military. It ensures the well-being of patients as soon as a call arrives at health care facilities of a patient in acute distress, to the point of arrival at the emergency rooms of health care facilities.
Well, one of the great challenges in taking care of patients with emergency cases is to first ensure that they are well taken care off at the point wherein they experience the distress and subsequently, to get seen in more detail at the various health care facilities. The last sentence alone exemplifies the great importance of pre-hospital care after watching the documentary entitled “Ambulansya de Paa”. The documentary showed the hardships faced by people living in Geographically-isolated-areas (GIDAs) on a daily basis, especially when it comes to access to health care. There was a young male who has been suffering from Tuberculosis and a malnourished baby with a multitude or problems such as pneumonia and diarrhea. The nearest local health center is located hours away and they need to travel on foot as they have very few utility vehicles. Another complicating thing is the fact that the people usually don’t have electricity and the roads are underdeveloped, making it hard for vehicles to use. There is the possibility of sick patients dying along the way to the local health centers.
Now, the situation would be very different if pre-hospital care would be there to attend to those patients. The simple presence of teams of emergency response units would already be making a difference. The patients in distress could be stabilized on site by providing them medications, intravenous fluids, oxygen support and more. The risk of patients dying while on the way would be drastically reduced. The subsequent transportation would be much easier as the patients would more or less be already stable when they reach the various health centers for more definitive treatment. Based on this, pre-hospital care already improves access to healthcare simply by showing up to those in need. Of course, pre-hospital care also involves ambulances and other means of transportation such as helicopters. A helicopter with complete equipment would very much transport patients in a blink of an eye, bypassing the obstacles of nature.
All of the aspects covered by a well-developed pre-hospital care system would make a tremendous change in the lives of people especially the underserved by improving the outcomes for patients with life-threatening conditions by giving them first-rate, high quality healthcare at the time and place they need it the most and ensuring a smooth, safe arrival to the various healthcare facilities. Therefore, pre-hospital care improves access to healthcare.