911, What's your emergency

Emergency Medical Technician

Have you ever wondered who responds to 911 calls? You might be thinking to yourself, “Duh, the paramedics”. Or maybe you have never given this question any thought. EMTs are trained professionals who respond to 911 calls and transport patients to the hospital. 

Many of you are probably not familiar with what an EMT means, or are hearing this term for the first time. An Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) provides out of hospital emergency medical care and transportation for critical and noncritical patients. As an EMT, my duties include basic life-saving techniques, such as CPR, bleeding control, oxygen administration and more. We are not doctors, but we are able to manage life-threatening situations and stabilize patients until they get to the hospital. We have two primary functions: treat and transport. We treat to the best of our ability, and transport to the appropriate hospital or facility.

We are not to get confused with paramedics, though. EMTs only need three months of training, and have a very limited scope of practice. For example, they assess patients and give oxygen. But paramedics need 8-11 months of training and can do much more than EMTs. For example, paramedics can start IVs and administer medications.

Here are a few memorable EMT stories:

1. Called to the home of a 600 lb. man.

2. Man accidentally sawed off his fingers.

3. Unconscious woman almost died from lack of oxygen.

Called to the home of a 600 lb. man.

When I entered his bedroom, I saw that his body took up the entire queen bed. He was complaining of stomach pain.

Here is what I did as an EMT in this situation:

- Requested additional resources

- Gave him oxygen

- Knocked his wall down

Requested additional resources

As soon as I saw how big this man was, I immediately called for additional resources, meaning more EMTs. There was no way that my partner and I could lift this man onto the gurney (this is a wheeled hospital stretcher).

Gave him oxygen

It was hard for him to breathe, so I put an oxygen mask on his face.

Knocked his wall down

We needed to transport him to the hospital. But his body did not fit through the doorway. I helped firefighters physically knock down the bedroom wall so we could get him out of the house and into the ambulance.

Man accidentally sawed off his fingers.

In EMT training, we briefly learned how to treat patients with amputations. Yet I never really thought I would come across a patient with an amputation. But one day, we were called to a wood shop, where a man accidentally chain sawed three of his fingers while working.

Here’s what I did to treat it:

- Gave him oxygen. 
- Bandaged his right hand.

- Found the amputated fingers.

- Put the amputated fingers in a bag of ice.

- Transported him to the hospital.

Unconscious woman almost died from lack of oxygen.

I once picked up an unconscious and intubated woman (this means that she had a tube going down from her mouth to her lungs). The nurse had already given her a sedative (the same one that Michael Jackson overdosed on), so that the tube could breathe for her. But the intubation device failed, and she was about to die from not getting any oxygen.

Here’s what I did in the ambulance:

- Monitored her oxygen saturation

- Treated her for hypoxia

- Reassessed vital signs

Monitored her oxygen saturation
Oxygen saturation means the amount of oxygen in someone’s blood. To measure this, I clipped a small device to her index finger, which automatically displayed the oxygen saturation level. Because her intubation device stopped working, she had abnormally low levels of oxygen: 72% (the healthy range is 94-96%).

Treated her for hypoxia

Hypoxia means lack of oxygen. People can die of hypoxia, and she was about to because her oxygen level read 72%. I quickly gave her oxygen with a device called a bag valve mask (BVM). Her oxygen levels started to rise after.

Reassessed vital signs

The main vital signs I reassessed were blood pressure, heart rate, pulse and oxygen saturation. I took these measurements every five minutes until we arrived to the hospital.

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