This week, Ontario officials announced a second, more stringent stay-at-home order in an attempt to help mitigate the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in the province.
"According to officials, there is a real threat that the province’s hospital system could collapse under the pressure."
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Marianne Meyers, BS, for EMS1 BrandFocus.
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As 2021 begins, COVID-19 vaccines have recently been approved, and it appears that the beginning of the pandemic’s end is in sight. That said, we are still experiencing large spikes throughout the country, and hospitals and EMS systems are under immense strain.
We aren’t quite on the other side, but we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Here are 10 things we’ve learned from the pandemic that can help improve other areas of EMS response:
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Sarah Calams of EMS1 BrandFocus.
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In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare and EMS providers have found themselves relying on technology more than ever before.
To celebrate the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, the World Health Organization (WHO) proclaimed 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife.
And what a year it's been. This year, the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe. Nurses everywhere have spent 2020 working through exhaustion, the daily risk of being exposed to the virus, and the stress of risking their family's safety as well as their own. According to a new study conducted in the UK, nurses are experiencing high levels of burnout and depression, and 28% of NHS nurses are quitting within three years—a 50% increase since 2013.
Summer blockbusters may have been cancelled, but this year, we've gotten to see what it truly means to be a superhero.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and emergency responders of every kind stepped up to take care of others. They’ve chosen to be there for us in our hour of need, sacrificing their own health, safety, and even the ability to go home to be with their families at the end of long, scary, and difficult shifts. That’s the true definition of heroism.
To celebrate these healthcare heroes, Marvel Comics partnered with Allegheny Health Network (AHN) in Pennsylvania to help tell the stories of these real-life heroes.
Emergency Medical Services—EMS, for short—is a branch of healthcare, public health, and public safety that responds to calls for help, 24/7, in almost every community in our nation. EMS encompasses a number of different services and roles, providing vital lifesaving care for patients during times of emergency. There are around 1.05 million licensed EMS professionals across the U.S. and nearly 623,000 of these are EMTs, while over 268,000 are paramedics.
Near the start of the COVID-19 pandemic last March, I found myself in a conversation with a friend. We shared our concerns about the days ahead, talking about how we were going to handle the kids learning from home, and discussing whether she was putting her family at risk by continuing to practice clinically.
Are you using old, non-patient-centric communication technologies like pagers or phone calls (or even WhatsApp) to solve present-day healthcare challenges? Do you ever wonder if there's a better way to connect your care teams?
At the European Resuscitation Council Virtual Congress on Oct. 24, 2020, Greg Brown, RN, Pulsara's Western Regional Sales Manager, hosted an exclusive webinar exploring just that. In "Patient-Centric Emergency Medicine: Why Mobile Team Communication Across Healthcare Organizations is the New Standard," Greg discusses how to improve acute care team communication and patient outcomes by switching to mobile technology — and why it is imperative to inter-organizational success.
It's been a big year for large-scale emergencies. Hurricanes, floods, wildfires, a pandemic — and responding to all these disaster scenarios involves a great deal of preparation, practice, and planning.
Recently, a panel of industry leaders and experts in EMS and emergency preparedness (including Pulsara's own CMO, Kris Kaull) got together for an exclusive fireside chat-symposium, hosted by HERE Technologies. The group talked about overcoming the obstacles of disaster preparedness and mitigation and how to build a culture of preparedness and cross-agency collaboration. As they discussed disaster mitigation for large scale public safety scenarios, they also touched on some of the latest technology that's helping to improve scenario planning.
Read on for the top 6 takeaways, or watch the full webinar below.
Editor's note: This is the third installment in our series on Finding the Next-Generation Telehealth Plan of Action for Your Hospital. Check out Part 1 and Part 2 here.
Before COVID-19 sent shockwaves through the healthcare community, telehealth only comprised a very small percentage of appointments for most hospitals. Almost overnight, hospitals realized that they needed a reliable platform for evaluating patients from a distance. The pandemic set in motion a mad scramble for a workable solution, and many hospitals reached for the first option they could find.
Earlier this year, in the weeks before COVID-19 changed life and healthcare as we know it, Latrobe Regional Hospital near Melbourne, Australia, was busy laying the groundwork for a new communication system between their hospital teams and Ambulance Victoria. Over the course of the next few months, Latrobe was able to implement Pulsara for treating patients across multiple departments, including stroke, mental health, pediatrics, trauma—and most pressingly, COVID-19.
As lawmakers and physicians debate what to do about telehealth restrictions in the wake of COVID-19, a growing number of clinicians would like to see telehealth become a more regular part of patient care.
The motion to make telehealth permanent after the pandemic seems to be gaining momentum, both in Canada and the United States. Canadian physicians and researchers seem to agree that while it won’t solve everything, telehealth has the potential to help remedy a lot of problems in healthcare across the provinces.
Of all the various crises facing healthcare in 2020, there is one underlying root issue that directly affects all of them. It determines everything about every single patient's care journey, from each care decision to every patient outcome.
However, very few healthcare professionals think to start with this issue in improving patient outcomes.
What's the issue?
Communication.
As hospitals and EMS agencies in Colorado Springs, Colorado, watched organizations around the world respond to COVID-19, they began to anticipate what their own response would look like. “We got to watch what happened in Italy and Europe and then subsequently in New York,” said Dr. Matt Angelidis, the co-medical director for the Colorado Springs Fire Department and AMR, and emergency physician for UC Health at Memorial Central, Memorial North, and Pike's Peak Regional Hospital. “We had time to think about, ‘Is there a better answer, or do we have an alternate way that we can take care of these patients and deliver care?’”
As the world buckled under the weight of COVID-19, emergency protocols were put in place to protect as many people as possible from exposure to the virus. Many of these protocols successfully achieved what they were designed to do. However, there were also many ways in which we didn’t yet fully understand the impacts of our pandemic response protocols.
Australian EMS agency Ambulance Victoria has recently released new research on the specific causes behind one such unintended consequence: increased deaths from sudden cardiac arrest.
For Latrobe Regional Hospital (LRH) near Melbourne, Australia, streamlining communication has been a major area of focus, both to improve patient care and to strengthen collaboration across its healthcare system. Up until the beginning of 2020, they used a combination of phone calls and pagers to interface among Emergency Services, ED, and hospital staff—resulting in inefficiencies and challenging communication for caregivers.
While the world has dealt with the far-reaching impacts of COVID-19, the healthcare community has had to deal with many unique challenges. Coming up with and implementing procedures to protect both patients and staff from possible exposure to the virus is a tricky process, especially when in some locations, hospitals have also been dealing with patient surges. Keeping up with routine scheduled visits and elective procedures then becomes even more difficult. As a result, telemedicine has become commonly used for patient care visits and follow up appointments.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Last month, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their third annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS.
About the Author: Rob Lawrence is the principal of Robert Lawrence Consulting. He previously served as the chief operating officer of Paramedics Plus in Alameda County, California. Before that, Rob was the COO of the Richmond Ambulance Authority. Rob is a former board member of the American Ambulance Association and currently serves as chair of its Communications Committee and a member of the media rapid response task force.
This data for this year’s EMS Trend Report was collected in 2019 B.C. – before COVID-19. At the time, we didn’t know what was just round the corner. This year’s report provides a real indicator of the circumstances and challenges we have already seen in the COVID-19 era. As EMS staff were the first warriors into the battle and onto the front line, mental health, post-traumatic stress injury and burnout have elevated to the top of the chart.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Last month, EMS1, Fitch & Associates, and the National EMS Management Association released their third annual EMS Trend Report, proudly sponsored by Pulsara. Because the articles and advice found within contain such critical subject matter, we've elected to publish each segment one at a time here on our blog. Read, enjoy, share, and take to heart the following information brought to you by the most prestigious thought leaders in EMS.
About the authors: Jay Fitch, PhD, is a founding partner of Fitch & Associates and is internationally recognized for leadership as a consultant, educator and innovator in EMS and public safety.
Anthony Minge, EdD, is a senior partner at Fitch & Associates. Prior to joining the firm, he was the business manager for Northwest MedStar in Spokane, Washington.
—EMS leaders anticipated a linear progression in 2020 – managing a slight increase in call volume and reimbursement, while trying to become more efficient and otherwise hold down costs. COVID-19 certainly changed the definition of normal, and perhaps how EMS will evolve in the future.
The EMS Trend Report asks a number of questions each year to ascertain industry perception of a wide variety of key issues and related trends, from measures used to track cardiac arrests, to clinical interventions, ePCR satisfaction, use of lights and sirens for 911 responses, budget changes, and the degree to which agencies are prepared for disruptive events.
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all groups of humanity. No matter where you live, what you do, or what your situation is, everyone has been impacted by the pandemic. For many people, COVID-19 has meant some pretty significant lifestyle changes.
So far, we have done a good job of thinking and talking about how the pandemic has impacted healthcare workers, public safety workers, and working professionals. There is one group, however, that I haven’t seen much attention devoted to: our kids.
Pulsara, a CommuniCare Technology, Inc. company.
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