Growth of Seattle's Medic One
"In
1969 the when program started training, nobody really knew what a paramedic
was. Everybody that was starting sort of made that up as they went, nor did
they know what sort of vehicle they had to have. So they essentially built a
mobile emergency room. It was a medium sized mobile home essentially, with an
x-ray machine and special lighting that you would find in an emergency room. " - Jonathan Larsen. This vehicle was nicknamed the "Moby Pig". This quickly changed to a more efficient model. "They
quickly learned in the first couple of years that most of that was really
extraneous, that they didn’t need such a big vehicle. " -Jonathan Larsen.
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Change in the response vehicle came early. "Sort of pop up campers, they call them. A van with a hyped up top." -Jonathan Larsen. This new generation of ambulance was more fit for the cramped city streets, therefore they could reach the patients quicker than the Moby Pig. Reevaluation of what was required in the field allowed for the smaller, quicker and more mobile vehicles.
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Early Medic One responders started with ride-a-long physicians. Like the changes that occurred with the early medical vehicles, evaluation of the system showed physician input was best concentrated from a central radio location.
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Paramedics were a new concept to the medical community early in Medic One's development. Leaders of Seattle's Medic One were determined to have every part of the program the best it could be. Paramedics in the field, had to implement each improvement of Medic One correctly the first time. Lives depended upon it.
"You could probably say that our training is more intense, more concentrated, and longer than most places. . . It is essentially a 10-11 month immersion training program. So people who participate in the training program, are assigned from the fire department or EMS agency, they are given to the paramedic training program, and they are trained sort of the way doctors are trained. They are given didactic training where they are given information, classwork sort of material. And then they are given multiple exposures to patients in a variety of settings, in the hospital and the field. Probably the strength of our program is the training and the experience, and the clinical exposure that the students are given. When they start training they really start riding on medic units, working at the emergency room the second day of training." -Jonathan Larsen. |
To further decrease time from cardiac event to life preserving recitation, the Medic One leadership looked to the community. Could it be possible to train enough citizens to perform CPR that the first responders would actually be a passerby? This epic experiment was called "Medic Two." The answer-YES. Medic Two became a reality in 1971. By the end of 1971 200,000 citizens had been trained. |
911 CALL
[Just Six Minutes: Medic One Foundation 2014]
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