National EMS Week: 30 Years and Counting, May 16–22, 2004
Spit-shine polished and all grown up, National EMS Week is turning 30. Started in 1974 by the American College of Emergency Physicians, the celebration's sponsoring organization "simply wanted to acknowledge the important care emergency medical personnel were beginning to provide on America's roadways," says ACEP's Director of EMS Programs, Rick Murray. This year's theme, "There When You Need Us," speaks to the growth the industry has experienced in those 30 years, as well as what the public has grown to expect from EMS when traumatic injury or illness occurs.
EMS today takes a systems approach to emergency services, Murray explains, dedicated to offering "complete care to the patient from injury to recovery." While that is true today, it would have been a tall order only three decades ago. For those who don't remember, the industry was still a kid.
An anniversary year makes a good time to reflect on how far the industry has come since the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council issued a report in 1966 titled, Accidental Death and Disability, the Neglected Disease of Modern Society. Initiated by physicians returning from military service, the report found that a person's chances of being killed on the road at home were higher than on the battlefields of Vietnam, primarily for one reason: a lack of domestic emergency medical treatment in the field. Convinced, Congress (under President Lyndon Baines Johnson) enacted the National Highway Safety Act of 1966, which established the DOT at Cabinet level and, under its wing, NHTSA, authorized to set national standards for EMS and fund research and development of EMS systems.
Prior to that time many communities' only access to ambulance service consisted of a hearse driven by employees of the local mortuary. Afterwards, Murray says, "physicians in cities like Seattle and Los Angeles County started training first responders-firefighters mainly and paraprofessionals such as hospital orderlies-in the same technical skills that battlefield medics were using to save soldiers' lives." And it grew from there.
National EMS Week highlights and draws upon the many agencies and associations that make up a modern, high-tech EMS system, always in close partnership with the communities and individuals who rely upon them. Murray explains, "EMS starts with the patient; the injury is the entry point into the system. And while we usually think of an EMT or a firefighter as the classic first responder, it could be anyone. It's the first person to help-maybe the person who calls 9-1-1. If that person has taken a volunteer course in, say, CPR, as the result of an EMS Week educational event, then you begin to see what we mean by a systems approach. All these parts have to fit together from the start and all the way up the line until the patient returns home."
NHTSA's mandate for the next 30 years includes building bridges among often-isolated public safety, healthcare and public health systems. "While emergency response must remain our foundation," says NHTSA's Agenda for the Future, closing these gaps "strengthens the essential value of EMS as the community's emergency medical safety net." The recent Congressional authorization to place AEDs on airlines and public sites where cardiac arrests are likely to occur and provide funds to train first responders in their use along with CPR is an example of such efforts.
EMS Week will be held in conjunction with National Emergency Medical Services for Children Day, as always on the Wednesday of EMS Week. Events in local communities nationwide will promote specialized emergency pediatric care to EMS providers; others will invite children to participate in educational and prevention activities.
ACEP has distributed more than 30,000 EMS Week organizational kits to help communities plan and promote activities. To order your complimentary kit, call 800/798-1822, touch 6. Kits can also be obtained from your state EMS office or any EMS Week partner organization. Visit www.acep.org/emsweek for more information.
