PEA RIDGE — Seeking advanced life support

Last time I wrote about advanced life support and basic life support emergency medical services in general.

Advanced life support services provide a continuous flow of needed intervention in severe cardiac, respiratory and trauma situations.

Basic life support services provide close to that same continuity, but with an added step in accessing ALS exclusive procedures.

Seconds count in a true medical emergency. Seconds in recognition of the emergency by the citizen, seconds in calling for assistance, seconds in response time of the assistance, seconds in delivery of needed procedures to the patient, seconds in hand off to a higher level of care, generally a hospital or physician.

Many systems have beenbuilt to streamline the sequence of assistance in an emergency including 911 dialing, radio dispatch, advanced training of emergency response personnel and emergency room staff on 24-hour standby.

These systems were accepted by communities and have come to be expected when assistance is needed.

The Arkansas State Health Department governs emergency medical services and requirements.

The basic life support licensing held by the Pea Ridge Fire Department requires that emergency medical technicians be present when working with a patient. The response requirement is an 8-minute “reaction time.” Upondispatch, the clock starts.

The ambulance must be rolling out the door within 8 minutes. This has been accomplished for years, as our first response basehas worked well to provide that by living close to the station and personal commitment.

An advanced life support licensing requires that paramedic-level responders be present when providing medical service. The required “reaction time” is reduced to 2 minutes, 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.

The 2-minute reaction time is usually accomplished by having paramedic trained personnel in the same building as the ambulance at all times.

When needed, a paramedic-licensed medical service provides immediate care close to the level of a hospital emergency department.

A basic life support service, while trained to recognize the needs of the patient, can provide limited services, in that they cannot perform any invasive procedures, i.e. airwayintubation, intravenous fluids/drug delivery, electrocardiograph interpretation or manual cardiac defibrillation.

When advanced interventions are needed, our service must call on Bentonville, Rogers or Bella Vista fire departments to meet en route, transfer patient care and begin those procedures.

While statistically it doesn’t happen very often, when you, your family member or neighbor needs it, they need it. And once again, seconds count. With the growth of the community, it will be needed more often.

Next time, the other foot drops. We’ll consider the expense - what we’re doing to cover those costs and where we’ll come up short.

Thank You.

FRANK RIZZIO Chief Pea Ridge Fire Department

Opinion, Pages 3 on 03/23/2011