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No more drunk driving? US to force carmakers to adopt life-saving tech by 2024
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023
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Ambulances almost never have a doctor onboard in the US
There are 2 main levels of EMS, Basic Life Support (BLS) and Advanced Life Support (ALS) There's some additional sub-categories, and some things vary according to local regulations and such, bit I'm just giving a very general overview.
As a general rule BLS will be staffed by EMTs and ALS will have a paramedic.
Paramedics can start an IV, administer some more medications than an EMT can, and provide some other more advanced treatments, but they stop well short of what a doctor can do.
Not all ambulances are staffed to the ALS level, a lot of places have had a hard time keeping their EMS agencies fully staffed, I know in my area, in theory, all of our agencies can provide ALS service, but frequently some of them have to go BLS-only due to staffing issues. Because of this, some areas have started expanding the scope of what EMTs are able to do to make up for a lack of paramedics (though they also often face a lack of EMTs as well)
I'm sure that's the same over here. But the situation in this discussion was that a family member shows signs of a stroke, in this case I don't think they will send an ambulance only capable to provide BLS but hopefully one of those.
MSUs are really cool, and I hope we see more of them, but they're relatively new, the first in the US hasn't even been around for a decade, so they aren't everywhere yet, as best as I can find, there's only a couple dozen or so of them throughout the country right now. I actually work in a 911 dispatch center, we don't have one in the area I work for (which is a pretty well-funded and equipped area) and they're not even something I remember being covered in any of my trainings or certification classes (the certifications I have are from national organizations like APCO, so they cover a lot of stuff that often doesn't apply to my area)
Ideally it should get an ALS unit, but sometimes you do just have to work with what's available.
Also to be clear, I'm not saying not to call for an ambulance if someone's having a stroke and drive them yourself or anything like that. Unless you happen to live really close to the hospital you're still probably going to be better off even if you get stuck with a BLS ambulance, they have a better idea what they're looking at than the average layperson and they're probably going to get there safer than someone who's freaking out because their passenger is having a stroke, doesn't do anyone any good if you get into an accident on the way to the hospital, or if things take a turn for the worse and you end up having to pull over on the side of a highway and try to do CPR or something with traffic whizzing by you and have to wait for an ambulance anyway, not to mention the nightmare of trying to figure out where you are to send an ambulance (cell phone locations arent always super accurate)