With the coming closure of Crozer Health EMS an understanding about the multiple levels of EMS service can be helpful.
BLS and ALS are the two levels for prehospital medical crews.
BLS, basic life support, are emergency medical technicians and quick response units. They may arrive with a fire company ambulance or as a quick response unit that provides nontransport services.
An emergency medical technician is an individual who has taken over 120 hours of training in lifesaving skills. They can administer oxygen, aspirin, nitroglycerin, epinephrine and breathing treatments.
EMT’s are trained to recognize the difference between a life-threatening emergency and a non-life-threatening emergency. They also carry automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to help in lifesaving situations when a paramedic is not yet on scene.
ALS stands for advanced life support.
These professionals are paramedics who were first EMTs and have taken 1,200 to 1,800 additional hours of training. Some paramedic programs even offer a two-year college degree.
Paramedics have also done clinical time in an emergency room and gone along with established paramedics to get hands-on clinical mentorship as a requirement of graduation.
Paramedics can perform advanced levels of care and are certified to give more than 50 drugs, managing a patient’s airway with an endotracheal tube during intubation, diagnosing heart attacks in addition to many other advanced skills.
Both paramedics and EMT’s are certified in HazMat, CPR, emergency driving and they take continuing education.
Some systems utilize a model where both paramedics and EMTs arrive together on the ambulance, while other systems utilize an ambulance staffed by two EMTs and the paramedic arrives via another vehicle, an aid car.
The aid car system allows the paramedic to cover a larger response area and to only be assigned to more serious calls.
Paramedics and EMTs are certified by the Pennsylvania Bureau of Emergency Medical Services, which is a division of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation.
Communities aim to provide both levels of care using multilayered systems.
Depending on the municipality, police and firefighters who are certified as EMTs are often dispatched to the call and are there first.
They will access the emergency and begin to perform basic life saving techniques, including CPR, control bleeding or immediate stabilization.
The paramedic and ambulance arrive and continue the treatment and transport to the hospital.
When paramedics respond in an aid car, they can go available on less serious calls that don’t require the ALS level of help. They are able to turn the patient over to the EMTs and go available and not be tied up at the hospital.
On serious calls, they park their vehicle and ride with the ambulance to the hospital.
