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Emergency Medical Dispatching Service Begins

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Emergency Medical Dispatching Service Begins

By Andrew Gorosko

When residents now call for ambulance service, the emergency dispatcher that they reach on the telephone line will be posing a formal series of questions to them, which seek to provide ambulance staffers responding to that call with important medical information about the patient.

On July 14, the town’s Emergency Communications Center at the police station began providing Emergency Medical Dispatching (EMD) on all on medical calls received by the town’s Emergency 911 system.

In the EMD program, dispatchers ask callers a series of questions designed to elicit information about the patient to help the responding ambulance crew better plan for patient treatment when they arrive at the scene of the medical emergency.

Also, when it is necessary, the dispatcher will provide prearrival instructions to the caller, explaining how the caller can help the patient before the ambulance crew arrives.

The EMD program has the side benefit of calming callers, as they answer a structured series of questions during a time of crisis.

Newtown is the first town in the region to offer EMD, which the state is requiring all municipalities to provide by July 2004.

At a July 23 session announcing the start of the EMD program, First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said that providing EMD service was a prime reason that the town has combined all its emergency dispatching services at the police station. Under that arrangement, an improved dispatching booth there combines police, fire, and ambulance dispatching in a facility that is staffed around-the-clock by two people. In the past, fire and ambulance dispatching had been handled from a dispatching facility in Edmond Town Hall. The local ambulance service received 1,832 calls for service last year.

Dr Craig Mittleman, a Newtown resident who heads Waterbury Hospital’s emergency medical care, is an advisor to the town on the EMD program.

Dr Mittleman said that the instructions provided by dispatchers to callers waiting for an ambulance to arrive could save the life of a patient.

The quality of EMD service provided by dispatchers to callers will be periodically critiqued by an outside reviewer to establish and maintain quality service, Dr Mittleman said. 

Dr Patrick Broderick, who heads Danbury Hospital’s emergency services unit, said Newtown’s early start in providing EMD service will provide a model that other municipalities in the region may emulate. A goal of the EMD program is providing consistency of service, he said.

Joseph DelBuono, director of the town’s dispatching center, said the key to the EMD program’s success is “good communication.” As the program matures, dispatching services will improve, he said.

“The program is a ‘bridge’ between the call and the time of arrival of emergency medical services,” he said.

Dispatchers recently received intensive training to prepare for their expanded duties, he said. Dispatchers now use an elaborate series of reference cards in conducting their queries of callers and providing information to callers, he said. That medical reference material soon will be provided to dispatchers on a computer network, he said.

Six key questions will be posed all callers seeking ambulance services, Mr DelBuono said. These questions concern: the street address of the medical problem; the telephone number of the caller; the exact nature of the medical problem; the age of the patient; whether the patient is conscious; and whether the patient is breathing.

The EMD system will help determine which ambulance calls are truly dire, he said.

Mr DelBuono estimates that 150 or more of the ambulance calls received by the town annually would involve dire emergencies, requiring detailed, extended conversations between dispatchers and callers. Such situations involve cases when patients are choking, are not breathing, or are in cardiac arrest. In such cases, dispatchers will provide very specific advice to callers, he said.

The Newtown Volunteer Ambulance Corps’ (NVAC) active participation in the EMD program will be an important aspect of its success, Mr DeBuono said.

NVAC Chief Ken Appley said the EMD program provides obvious benefits to residents. Having details on a patient’s condition before arriving at the scene of a medical emergency aids ambulance staffers, he said.

“People are getting immediate care now. They’re getting guidance,” he said.

The guidance provided by a dispatcher to a caller to help a patient could help that patient survive, he said.

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