Good evening readers, I hope you all had a great weekend. Today I am going to talk about some breaking news in the emergency medical dispatch field. Many EMS systems across the nation are starting to implement a new dispatch protocol. Now when patients experiencing chest pain call 911, they will be instructed to self-administer aspirin prior to the arrival of the ambulance. The long time standard has been that dispatchers would advise all patients to take nothing by mouth while they wait for paramedics to arrive. This is a big step in a new direction for our nations EMD systems. Studies by the Nation Academies of Emergency Dispatch have shown that the new aspirin protocol will decrease scene times and possibly improve the outcome for patients experiencing cardiac episodes.

The dispatchers will not instruct patients to take the aspirin if they are a minor, disoriented, have a known allergy or have a known bleeding disorder.

This protocol is already in place in Kern County, California. I personally have responded to several incidents where patients have taken the aspirin before my arrival. So far it appears that the protocol is effective. I have yet to run into any issues.

If this turns out to be a success, then I think we will start to see more "prior to arrival" interventions being implemented. I'm glad to see more being done in an effort to decrease the amount of cardiac related deaths.



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