With that being said any one have ideas as to improve the safety for EMS providers when LEO isn't immediately available?
The same old answers as always:
* Good proactive dispatchers who identify potentially dangerous situations and initiate mandatory staging.
* A clearly defined staging policy that doesn't punish crews or dispatch for exercising judgment, supported and defended by management.
* Good working communication with police to get assistance fast in problematic situations.
* Appropriate PPE, including safety glasses, +/- ballistic vests.
* An organisational culture that doesn't encourage crewmembers to enter dangerous scenes or be reluctant to involve law enforcement.
* Standing orders for chemical restraint.
* Mature crews that don't rush into situations without evaluating them appropriately.
* Policies for dispatch to check on the welfare of crews after they've been on scene for x minutes.
* Panic buttons; help codes on radios.
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If you want to go beyond that into all the "What if..." situations that happen when all of these fail, the here are some thoughts.
- I don't believe weekend courses in self defense every couple of years provide a functional ability to defend yourself.
- I don't believe that weapons, be they pepper spray, batons, tasers or firearms are worth the potential hassle in terms of training hours, risk of self-injury, and risk of the device being used on the paramedic. I think they are likely to create more problems.
Most of the situations I've been in have been little more than a sloppy wrestling match with some drunk or psych patient who doesn't have a real intent to injure, but has reacted negatively for whatever reason. They haven't been true life or death situations, but they have resulted in people being put on the floor so that I can either sit on them or run away.
The cops will probably protect you within limits. If you cut someone up with a knife, you have probably exceeded these limits unless they were armed. If you break someone's jaw / orbit / remove their dentition with a mag-lite, the same applies. They will likely be obligated to charge you, unless there are some truly extenuating circumstances.
I would argue that being physically strong, and large would probably help you (1) not get hurt (2) not have to fight in the first place against a smaller, rational person, (3) be able to win a wrestling match against an untrained individual.
If you want to train martial arts, I would do it because it's fun, more than because you're terrified of a life-or-death situation arising on the ambulance. Because it's a whole lot of work for a fairly unlikely occurrence. It's not one weekend every two weeks.
If you were to train martial arts, a grappling based martial art would probably be very helpful for both types of encounters, e.g. wrestling, judo, brazilian jiu jitsu. Or perhaps a striking art with elements of grappling, e.g. muay thai.
If you want to win a street fight, it helps to be big, strong, cheat (i.e. be the multiple attacker, or surprise attacker), be armed, and have a grounding in an "alive" martial art, like those mentioned above, or boxing. You may get charged if you break someone's nose and detach their retina in a situation where you weren't injured and can't justify the level of response, but that's where judgment comes in.
But I would argue that this sort of talk is mostly fantasy-paranoia. We all probably know people who've been hurt, and I imagine most of us have technically been "assaulted" at some point without suffering real injury. But all the martial arts training in the world is unlikely to help you if your assailant is armed, or their first blow(s) incapacitate you. The risk of such an event happening is low, and the training required to actually be able to defend against it is quite high.
