“Tabletop
exercises improve the critical incident outcome!”
The unique roles and responsibilities of Emergency Medical
Services often are not understood as thoroughly as others
in the first response community.
“Unlike most police, sheriff, and fire departments,
EMS comes in many different colors and shapes and arises from
different organizations and jurisdictions. EMS is provided
by fire departments, volunteer groups, private companies (local
and national), hospitals, public health agencies, military,
police, charitable organizations, and so on. Each of these
EMS groups has its own agenda, procedures, staffing, and resources.
Each has distinct training and communication methods.”
While the single-minded focus of EMS functions well in the
everyday world of attending to single patients who need treatment
and transportation, the demands of “interoperability”
and communication must be satisfied in the incident of major
proportion. In a major critical incident, the dynamics of
resource allocation, multi-agency coordination, command and
communications have to be channeled though a command structure.
The events and climate of emergency response since September
11, 2001 have demonstrated a need to “institutionalize”
the way all responders and receivers must interact. The Incident
Command System (ICS) is an on-scene management program that
has been mandated by the Department of Homeland Defense. “EMS
professionals need to understand the big picture as well as
their rules and responsibilities. They must know who they
report to (e.g., incident commander, liaison officer, operations
chief, staging officer) in order to get assignments and to
ensure well-coordinated and effective performance.”
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