Integrated Clinical Clerkship in Emergency Medicine AY 2021- 2022

Early recognition, appropriate interventions, and prompt transfer remain the cornerstone of pre-hospital care. The provision of emergency services results to better clinical outcomes as lifesaving and life-prolonging measures can be given to patients with acute life-threatening conditions before they receive definitive treatment in the hospitals. Especially in far flung and geographically isolated areas where people and patients need to go down the mountain or ride a boat for hours just to get to the nearest hospital or clinic, pre-hospital care is as important as definitive treatment as it drastically improves patients’ survival. Without pre-hospital care, patients are left to suffer on their own along their way to the facility and be in mercy of time. In the documentary “Ambulansiyang-de-paa”, it is evident that pre-hospital care plays a critical role in the management of emergency situations. The difficulties and barriers to health care brought about by the geography of the area, unavailability and inaccessibility of quality medical services and trained medical personnel, and lack of education worsened the way how emergency cases are handled in such scenarios. Not only the pre-hospital care suffers in these situations, but also the entirety of health care including disease prevention, health promotion, and education. Although the documentary was made 5 years ago, it is still near to our present reality. It revealed how difficult our kababayans work just to live on a daily basis. Thus we must continue to push, not only for the improvement of prehospital care, but also for the development of the other areas of our health care system.