EMS Week

Nationwide, seniors are one of the largest consumers of emergency and prehospital healthcare. Almost 16 million Americans aged 65 and older visited a hospital emergency room in 2004, and these older Americans made up one-third of all ambulance transports, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Seniors can benefit greatly from outreach and education during EMS Week.

An EMS honor guard can appropriately represent your EMS service in honoring deceased members, not only during EMS Week but throughout the year. Here are some tips on how to start an Honor Guard in your area.

Why is it that the TV cameras show up on the most gruesome wrecks, but when you try to get them to cover your EMS Week open house, they’re as scarce as backboards on an MCI? Read more for Tips for EMS Week Media Coverage.

As you plan your EMS Week activities, remember that effective communication with patients and their families in your community may mean developing written materials in languages other than English.

Parkland Ambulance Care, Ltd. in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, has come up with an effective and inexpensive way to distribute life-saving information thanks to the old adage, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

Looking for finger foods for your open house? There’s no better way to interest older kids and teenagers in EMS than to gross them out. With gelatin brains, hearts and eyeballs, kids can hold a life-giving organ in their own hands – albeit a slippery, slimy, inanimate one. These “ick”-inducing foods and drinks will indulge kids’ senses, while teaching them about their bodies and acquainting them with EMS.

Bears! Dogs! Dinosaurs! Oh my! EMS mascots are everywhere, bringing cheer and friendly faces to what can be a scary business of lights, sirens and accidents.

Use these little reminders and associations to help make your EMS Week activity planning run smoothly.

One of the best ways to invite the public to learn about your EMS agency is by hosting an open house. Children, adults and seniors are curious about EMS, and many people would love a chance to meet their local EMTs and paramedics and take a peek inside the ambulance. Here are some tips to help you host a successful open house for EMS Week.

February is, of course, when Americans celebrate Valentine’s Day, which makes it a perfect month to focus your outreach efforts on heart health. February is also the American Heart Association’s Heart Health Month, so EMS agencies have a natural ally with which to partner, plan and execute heart-health promotions.

It was 1960. John F. Kennedy was running for president. Xerox introduced the first paper copy machine. Khrushchev pounded his shoe at the United Nations. And across the country, coronary artery disease had reached epidemic levels. Many men in their 50s and 60s were heart attacks waiting to happen. They smoked, didn’t exercise and ate lots of red meat and foods high in saturated fats. (If you weren’t around then, think “Mad Men.”) Many had uncontrolled high blood pressure. Cholesterol-lowering statins had not yet arrived on the scene.

So it was fortuitous, and a bit ironic, that the year coronary artery disease peaked also marked the birth of modern CPR.

They say everything is bigger in Texas. That includes CPR events.

Five years ago, physician Robert Cluck, mayor of Arlington, put forth a challenge to his city’s 360,000 residents: Improve cardiac arrest survival rates by teaching 10 percent of the population how to perform CPR.