Tag: emergency medical services

New York City, New York / USA - May 2 2020: New York City healthcare workers during coronavirus outbreak in America.

Pandemic Threatens Future of Emergency Medical Services

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Benjamin Podsiadlo

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed persistent, wide-ranging existential threats to effective 911 emergency response.

The EMS (Emergency Medical Services) system, which sits at the intersection of emergency medicine and public safety, is the out-of-hospital component of the acute care health care system. The EMS mission is targeted at identifying, responding, assessing, treating, and entering suddenly ill and injured patients in the community into the health care system.

The EMS system’s viability is entirely dependent upon the capacity of its workforce of EMTs, paramedics, and 911 EMS telecommunicators to respond 24/7/365.

The devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on EMS include: severe damage to workforce sustainability; grossly insufficient logistical resourcing; and further erosion of cohesive system identity.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 05: Emergency medical technician wearing protective gown and facial mask amid the coronavirus pandemic on April 5, 2020 in New York City.

Don’t Call Me a Hero: How to Meaningfully Support Health Care Workers

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Molly Levene

“Heroes Work Here.”

Sometimes those three short words make me angry; other times they make me cry.

I was one among thousands of EMTs and paramedics who were deployed to New York through FEMA last year. Having studied public health in school and worked in EMS for over a year, I thought I had seen the extent to which we fail patients; I believed myself disillusioned enough to be prepared for any injustice or chaos I might encounter.

But last April, I quickly learned I was wrong. And when you feel complicit in such deep structural dysfunction, it is incredibly difficult to feel heroic.

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LOMBARDIA, ITALY - FEBRUARY 26, 2020: Empty hospital field tent for the first AID, a mobile medical unit of red cross for patient with Corona Virus. Camp room for people infected with an epidemic.

The Fourth Wave of COVID-19: The Effects of Trauma on Health Care Workers

Stephen Wood Leave a comment

This post is the introduction to our newest digital symposium, In Their Own Words: COVID-19 and the Future of the Health Care Workforce. All contributions to the symposium will be available here.

By Stephen Wood

On this day one year ago, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom declared COVID-19 a pandemic, sounding the alarm about the international threat posed by the virus.

Today, one year later, I fear the end is not in sight. In fact, I believe that we are on the precipice of a fourth wave.

The fourth wave will strike the people on the frontlines of this pandemic — health care workers. It will be the effects of the trauma that health care workers entrenched in this pandemic have faced. And it is likely to have significant and lasting effects on our health care system.

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Busy Nurse's Station In Modern Hospital

Violence Against Health Care Workers: Legislative Responses

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By Stephen Wood

COVID-19 and other diseases aren’t the only threat to health care workers. Violence in the workplace is a common occurrence and on the rise.

Despite these troubling trends, the policy response at both federal and state levels has, so far, been lacking.

In a recent survey of nurses, 59% reported that they had been the victims of workplace violence. More than half of those respondents went on to report that they were not satisfied with how the incidents were handled.

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