Saw my first one last night...

shelvpower

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hi, im a 17 yo volunteer firefighter from south africa with about 1500 hours behind my name, as a volunteer ff I haven't seen a dead person before but I managed to go on a ride along last night with our local ambulance service, our first call was for a 80yo male patient with chest pain, the paramedic did his thing to stabilise the patient and we then proceeded to transport the patient to the hospital. The 2nd calls was at about 9pm for a person that has washed ashore.(went missing the previous day), we had to go and declare him.
We struggled to get to the victim because of the rocky terrain but we atlast managed to reach him. Well he was covered with a blanket with his feet sticking out. As the paramedic proceeded to lift the blanket I struggled to make a choice, must I look or not? I quickly decided to look (curiosity) and at first I was a bit shocked at what I saw. But I started feeling better after a while. We struggled to get him up back to the road. Probably the worst moment was when his mother had to identify him, her crying will probably stick with me for a while but im looking forward to my next shift.
Later the night we had a assault victim and the rest was just people with minor injuries.
If I find that the emergency services is for me im going to study a 4 year course in emergency medical care that specialises in patient care and quite a few rescue modules.
im looking forward to contribute towards the forum and getting to know you guys.
thanks for reading
Sheldon
 

NomadicMedic

I know a guy who knows a guy.
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Welcome. In reading about South African EMS, it seems like a crazy place to work. Best of luck to you in your studies.
 

MonkeyArrow

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Welcome. Just wondering in South Africa, how are emergency service provided? Are they govt. run or contracted through private companies. Are fire/EMS/and police separate entities or are they all run under one roof? It seems like retrieving the pt. from the rocky terrain would be something more along the lines of what our fire dept./rescue entities would do (Coast Guard if appropriate for body retrieval).
 

teedubbyaw

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Welcome. Just wondering in South Africa, how are emergency service provided? Are they govt. run or contracted through private companies. Are fire/EMS/and police separate entities or are they all run under one roof? It seems like retrieving the pt. from the rocky terrain would be something more along the lines of what our fire dept./rescue entities would do (Coast Guard if appropriate for body retrieval).


You should watch the document someone posted about on netflix, "tell me and I will forget."
 

Handsome Robb

Youngin'
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Welcome. Just wondering in South Africa, how are emergency service provided? Are they govt. run or contracted through private companies. Are fire/EMS/and police separate entities or are they all run under one roof? It seems like retrieving the pt. from the rocky terrain would be something more along the lines of what our fire dept./rescue entities would do (Coast Guard if appropriate for body retrieval).


There's two types of healthcare in SA. Public and private. Public you might be waiting hours upon hours for an ambulance and when they arrive they might not even have the gear they need.

Private is like working for a u.s. Service or hospital as far as equipment goes.

That's an extreme oversimplification, I hope the OP jumps in to provide a mor in depth answer.

I've spent a fair amount of time thinking about trying to get a work visa and going there to work as an ALS provider. They need them badly.
 

MonkeyArrow

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I'll definitely look into the movie then!
 
OP
OP
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shelvpower

Forum Crew Member
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Welcome. Just wondering in South Africa, how are emergency service provided? Are they govt. run or contracted through private companies. Are fire/EMS/and police separate entities or are they all run under one roof? It seems like retrieving the pt. from the rocky terrain would be something more along the lines of what our fire dept./rescue entities would do (Coast Guard if appropriate for body retrieval).

We have ambulance services that is runned by government and then also private companies.
Our police force is also runned by the government.
Our fire dept. on the other hand is runned by each town's municipality. That is where alot of problems come in, each municipality runs his dept as it sees fit. On average we respond with 7 to 6 crew members to a house fire, but we manage and our department has had no LODD's thus far. I honestly think there will be a time when murphy will come and bite us in the @ss but who am I to make that decisions.
Metro EMS (government) has its own rescue vehicle's aswell. They have far more, and better equipment than the fire departments do and they are starting to take over on rescue related calls eg. mva's.
The opportunities with Metro is endless, they keep sending their people on courses and stuff. As for the response times, our town has 3 Metro ambulances and one private owned ambulance. Our response times is very good but I dont know how its going in the busier cities like Johannesburg and Cape Town.
We get alot of assault related calls in the informal settlements most being stabbed wounds. Most of our house fires is also informal houses known as Shacks.

They are trying to stop the short courses (eg. basic ambulance assistant etc) and replacing it with the college/university degrees ( Bachelor's in emergency medical care etc.) There is a shortage of ALS providers because alot of our ALS providers is leaving the country especially if they have a bachelor's degree in EMC.

As for the body recovery, I probably exaggerated a bit. The terrain wasnt that harsh but at 9 o clock the evening its not fun to carry a corpse over rocky terrain especially if its your first one.
 
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