When do
paramedics work? The previous article mentioned that paramedics are a
profession that provides pre-hospital and emergency medical services.
Paramedics,
based on the general perception, seemingly need the paramedic only when a medical
emergency occurs.
In reality,
the medical emergency response occurs every day, ranging from medical
emergencies due to deadly diseases to traffic accidents which occur 110,000
incidents/year (based on traffic accident data for 2011 – 2021).
In traffic
accidents, victims are divided into 3, namely: Fatality, serious injury (including
permanent disability), and minor injuries. The total number of victims resulting
from traffic accidents, on average every year is 150,000 or 400 people/day.
Combined
all the numbers from traffic accidents, deadly diseases, and pandemics, in a
day (based on available data) > 700 people need pre-hospital medical
services.
The right
question is not about the needs of the paramedic, it is about the capability and
the right question "is the number of paramedics in Indonesia
sufficient?".
Indonesia
is a huge country with a road length of more than 544 thousand kilometers (2020
data) and upcoming new roads of > 2000 km in 2024. 140 million motorized
vehicles (a combination of motorbikes, cars, buses, and trucks transporting
goods). Those facts have exposed Indonesia high-risk road safety country.
With the
geographical conditions and stretch the roads in all provinces in Indonesia,
there is an unequal development of first responder infrastructure to support traffic
accidents. With challenging geographical conditions, making first respond to
medical emergy challenging.
In a review
https://newnaratif.com/stretched-thin-inside-jakartas-ambulance-service/
told the story of the challenging situation faced by the medical services and
ambulance services, as off today pandemic situation, their duties will increase
although the limitation remains to exist.
The
readiness of paramedics is a challenge by itself, where periods of the covid-19
pandemic, deadly illness, and traffic accidents continuously occur within 24
hours.
With the
limited number of ambulances and paramedics, the workload becomes overloaded
and becomes a risk for paramedics.
Work shift
rotation pattern for 24 hours, alternately, but often still have to stay alert
because the situation has forced them to standby to support.
A
worst-case scenario, judging from the experience in Indonesia, where a traffic
accident occurred and resulted in many victims, at the same time the number of
victims of the Covid-19 pandemic rose while 100 km away from the first
responder center the natural disaster, a volcanic eruption, is occurred at the
same time.
This
situation could suddenly be topping the existing workload and become remarkably
overloaded, making all these loads burden the paramedic’s shoulder.
Considering
the above situation, this is the reason why paramedics will continue to become "superheroes"
and continue to provide medical services to respond the medical emergency:
1. Traffic accidents that happen every
day
2. The victim is sick from a deadly
disease
3. Victims of the C-19 pandemic
Counting some
of the paramedics is also a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly
reducing the availability of paramedics but the workload still tends to
increase due to the high number of traffic accidents.
Paramedics
are human beings who had tired and stressed, but on the other side, the duty
and responsibilities as professional paramedics remain.