Dose EMS need a Strike team

[Jim37F]

I brought up the four pt set ups in my old rigs, and that it is still military standard, in a recert class. The instructors were horrified that I would even consider transporting more than two pts at a time...

Im aghast at what “paramedics” think is a standard of care now. How will they ever cope in a real MASCAL.

I had like 5 or 6 at once one time. Auto Accident, all family members from the same vehicle, Fire didn't wanna wait for an extra ambulance or two lol. Only 1 on the gurney, who was holding the baby, 1 up front, rest on the bench.

Idk if I'd call it routine per say (that was a horrible amount of paperwork for one call lol), but 2 or 3 wasn't/isn't all that uncommon... tho I can say the first time I was asked to take 2 patients in one ambulance was certainly a "wait, what now?" reaction from me lol

 

[Akulahawk]

We have strike teams as well. The OP doesn’t seem to understand HOW this works. Sure, you can, possibly, get a bunch of rigs rolling in a few minutes to a few hours, however, you can’t strip all of them. That takes time to organize. It’s in just about every EMS policy I’ve read.

The OP seems to think these rigs and staff will magically appear or can be hired and kept on standby.

BTW, “dose“ is an amount of something, usually medication. Does is a question.

One MCI I was on some 20 years ago required the use of (literally) every available unit within 3 counties. It only required something like 30-ish ambulances. There were over 150 patients. Amazingly and thankfully enough, there were only a very few seriously bad patients (less than 10) and once those had been transported, it only took a few hours for the entire incident to be resolved and all units released. This was accomplished with the magic of mutual aid... but it stripped ALL of the non-911 units from three counties for about 4 hours. Because of the time the incident occurred and a few other factors, all of those units were staged within minutes to an hour. Had there been a "strike team" need, that would have taken HOURS just to organize and dispatch, let alone travel time...

Also, just in case anyone was wondering, ambulances from other counties were sent to provide IFT services while the initial 30 were staged on that MCI. Again, a bit of good luck was involved as not many IFTs were needed. Even more good luck smiled upon us that night as the 911 system wasn't horribly busy. Yet further luck smiled upon us that night because back then ALL of the units were from counties where the 911 system going to "level 0" was a VERY common occurrence and therefore all the non-911 crews were well-experienced working 911.

To say "it could have been worse" is an understatement. It really could have been bad. I suspect that was a bit of an eye-opener for the county I worked in as it highlighted just how bad things could have potentially become. The next 911 contract negotiation resulted in a LOT more 911 system units. While going to "level 0" happened basically daily, everyone (including the EMS agency) had gotten used to it and pretty much shrugged it off as it had become a part of normal operations.

Ambulance strike teams? Yeah, planning for that was a thing... on paper, likely only to be pulled off the shelf for CBRNE incidents.