Integrated Clinical Clerkship in Emergency Medicine AY 2021- 2022

Proper pre-hospital care is very important in improving outcomes for patients because patients could easily deteriorate or worsen on the way to the hospital. This is especially true for patients with acute life-threatening conditions - these patients need immediate care, and delaying basic interventions in favor of waiting for them to reach the hospital may lead to their demise. Access to proper health care is not synonymous with access to hospitals - it includes everything else, such as proper access to primary health care clinics, nutrition, sanitation, and yes, proper pre-hospital care. As shown in the documentary Ambulansyang-de-Paa, because of limitations in infrastructure there is difficulty in bringing patients to see health professionals. While the resilience of the communities shown in the documentary is praiseworthy, this is not ideal at all. Many complications can happen in the 3-4 hour trek down to the municipal health center, and that time delay will still increase while they are being transported to the hospital, at which time patients would already be in a much worse state than they had began with. It doesn't help that those volunteering to help bring the ill down to the healthcare centers do not know how to manage these conditions. Proper pre-hospital care would thus be able to prevent these complications, but this would also entail fixing many other related socioeconomic issues such as the rampant poverty, lack of proper governance, lack of funding, lack of medicines, lack of electricity and proper infrastructure, lack of doctors and other HCWs, etc.