paramedics They are the lifelines of American societies, responding to All medical emergencies. However, the history of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is unknown.
in American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics, Author Kevin Hazard, a former paramedic, highlights black men in Pittsburgh who was a pioneer in the profession and a model for emergency medical services that other cities copied.
In 1966, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) published a white paper that served as a damning indictment of the nation’s emergency response system. “Essentially, the paramedics weren’t plentiful enough to be there when they were needed, and then they weren’t trained well enough to be of much use when they were there,” Hazzard says.
Ambulances were, in some cases, hearing aids driven by the mortuary from the funeral home who would later plan the patient’s funeral. In other cases, the sick and injured may be cared for by police officers or volunteer firefighters who are not trained to provide emergency care. Americans were more likely to survive a gunshot wound Vietnam War On the home front, according to the NAS report, at least the injured soldiers are accompanied by trained medics. “In 1965, 52 million accidental injuries killed 107,000 people, disabled more than 10 million, and permanently disabled 400,000 American citizens at a cost of nearly $18 billion,” the report states. He said. “It is the leading cause of death in the first half of life.”
This lack of emergency care affected Peter Savar, an Austrian-born anesthesiologist at the University of Pittsburgh and a pioneer of CPR who helped develop the hospital’s modern intensive care unit (ICU). He lost his daughter in 1966 asthma attack Because she did not get proper assistance between her home and the hospital. So he dealt with the loss with a modern ambulance design – including the equipment inside, as well as its paint scheme. Perhaps most importantly, he also designed the world’s first comprehensive paramedic training course.
The first people to take the course in 1967 were a group of black men who were at Freedom House, an organization that originally offered vegetable delivery jobs to black Americans in need. Initially the idea was to shift the delivery service from delivering food to getting people to medical appointments. But within eight months, drivers were trained to handle emergencies including heart attacks, seizures, childbirth and suffocation. Their first calls were made during uprising after the assassination Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.
The data showed that the training worked. A 1972 study of 1,400 patients admitted to area hospitals by Freedom House over a two-month period found that paramedics provided correct care to critical patients 89% of the time. By contrast, the study found that police and volunteer ambulance services provided appropriate care only 38% and 13% of the time, respectively. Nancy Caroline, a member of Freedom House, wrote a textbook on EMS training that has become the national standard.
Despite Freedom House’s success, the city canceled the program in 1975. Pittsburgh Mayor Peter Flaherty believed he could create a better system and replaced Freedom House with a team of white paramedics. Hazzard told TIME that he thinks racism plays a role. As he put it, “What other reason might he have for not wanting this organization, which has been so successful and has been a model across the country and around the world, other than the fact that it was an almost completely black organization.”
Hazard says the true story “doesn’t make the city look good,” which is why he believes the story of the country’s first medics isn’t better known. But Hazard believes that there are lessons in this story that are useful for all professions, not just paramedics. Many of Freedom House’s participants went on to earn master’s, doctoral, or medical degrees — or worked in careers in politics or in the upper echelons of police, EMS, and fire departments.
“They were really successful people who came out of nowhere and where it all started was opportunity in 1967,” Hazzard says. “All the world required a group of young people to cross off one chance, and they never looked back from that point on. Anyone can reach great heights. They only need one chance.”
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