An Air Ambulance Can Save Your Life? Possibly!

Emergency Medical Services is slowly advancing through time. They try to develop more ways on how they could quickly respond to emergency medical situations. The ambulance started only as a transport for patients to hospitals for them to receive medical treatment. Now, patients can receive supplementary treatment while they are being carried to the hospital.

Land based ambulances are now equipped with the latest medical apparatus so they can perform minor tests and also give relief to patients. For areas that are impossible to reach by the regular ambulance, the air ambulance is available.

Air ambulances are aircraft that are designed to be used for assisting in critical medical situations in remote areas or where air transportation is more accessible. It is literally a flying ambulance. It carries the usual medical equipment like ECG and monitors, ventilators, medication and stretchers.

It also has a medical crew on board. Undoubtedly, this is the fastest way to respond to a medical emergency and transport the patient to receive full medical attention.

Choosing the crew for an air ambulance is critical. For pilots, they require higher credentials than the pilots who only fly regular flights. Experience is also at core. This is to ensure the safety and capability of the pilot in flying emergency flights.

The US government and the Commission on Air Medical Transportation Systems (CAMTS) have set standards for air ambulance service. They require the service companies to have their own aircraft and ensured that the pilot and his crew, as well as the plane meet higher standards. The accreditation is done by experts to ensure air ambulance safety.

The medical staff is chosen depending on different conditions. It could be by country, area, service provider or by the type of air ambulance. In services using the Anglo-American model of service delivery, helicopters are mostly preferred to carry patients and the crew may include Emergency Medical Technicians, paramedics, flight nurses and sometimes a physician.

For companies who focus on critical care transport, they mostly consist of nurses and doctors. The Franco-German model uses the air ambulance as a support for ground-based Medical Teams. Their crew is composed of a doctor, a surgeon, trauma specialist, specially-trained advanced care paramedic or nurses. Transport of the patient is done by the ground ambulance, not by air ambulance.

Air ambulance service or Aero medical evacuation is being offered by different organizations. It may also depend on which country you are in. These organizations include military or personal models, government-funded, fee-for-service, donated by a business organization and also public donations funded.

Aside from the organization, you must also know the different aircraft that they use. It can be a rotary wing, a fixed-wing or a huge aircraft.

Almost all air ambulances, except for charter aircraft or military planes are equipped for advanced life support. One problem on most air ambulance operations are ambient noise especially for helicopters. They also have some limited space that restricts the on board medical crew to perform certain medical tests.

Pressure is also a big factor with air ambulances for not all of them have pressurized cabins. That is why they need a medical crew that has higher skills so they could adjust the medications and also check for changes in physiology and behavior of gases against pressure.

Now we already know the advantages and benefits of air ambulances to our lives. We could also expect that in the near future, there will be big improvements in terms of Emergency Medical Services particularly with air ambulances. We can be confident that wherever we are, help can still reach us.

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