Georgetown: Sustaining serious injuries during a road accident or any life threatening incident may no longer be a death sentence, given the plans apace to expand and enhance the ambulatory service of the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC). According to Matron of the public health institution, Sister Audrey Corry, the plans which will be implemented in the very near future will in fact represent a drastic change when compared to the service that is currently offered. “At the moment all we can do is send out an ambulance to pick up somebody off the street or wherever they are injured and sometimes by the time they get to the hospital they are dead.”
This state of affairs, she attributed to the fact that no medical personnel are usually on hand to support patients as they are transported to the hospital for medical attention. However, with the recent completion of a training programme, which was designed to train nurses to undertake the training of first responders, this dilemma is likely to be reversed, she said. With the inclusion of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) in responding ambulances, medical attention could be delivered to injured persons in a timely manner. “Once we have trained people on board the ambulances they can begin working on patients; they can do Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), start IV lines and what not and patients can be attended to all the way to the hospital.” This, she said, will undoubtedly allow for persons to have a better chance of survival as there will not only be intervention at the scene of an accident but efforts will also be made to ensure that precious moments are not lost enroute to the hospital.
“We saw the need for this training…we knew that we had ambulances but they did not have the manpower… all our ambulances did was to try to bring the injured people in quickly…they are always in a hurry but with this new plan we can commit to a change,” Sister Corry noted.
According to her not only will the hospital commit to introducing a much needed change in the ambulatory service but also to ensuring that its trained staffers pass on their newly found knowledge to other health care workers. “We are committed to sustaining this programme and ensuring that it contributes to the improvement of the quality of health care we offer,” Sister Corry added.
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