Fewer Paramedics Is Better?
A study from Ohio State University seems to indicate that fewer paramedics in a city results in a higher survival rate for cardiac patients (from USA Today via FireFightingNews.com).
"Our data seem to show that cities with the fewest number of paramedics for a given population are more likely to have higher survival rates," says Michael Sayre of the emergency-medicine department at Ohio State University in Columbus. "Having a smaller number of paramedics who are very highly trained is probably a better strategy for delivering good patient outcomes."
Huh? That makes no sense to me. However, the article then states:
Researchers believe the individual paramedics in such cities deal with a higher volume of critical cases, keeping sharp such tricky skills as intubation, the insertion of a tube into the trachea to open an airway."There are a number of procedures required regularly to stay expert," says Corey Slovis, Nashville's EMS medical director. The study's lesson is "we've got to demand expertise from our experts," he says.
Hmmm...could be. Although this leads me to think that fewer paramedics isn't necessarily the answer. It tells me that the paramedics that a city has need to regularly practice and use critical care skills. I agree with the last paragraph from the article:
"Nobody knows what is the right number of paramedics per 100,000 population, and what is the best way to deploy the paramedics you already have in order to save the most lives," says Marc Eckstein, medical director for the Los Angeles Fire Department. "The need for research to answer these questions has never been greater."
