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The 49th annual Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Week will be observed next week, from May 21‑27, 2023.
EMS is a vital public service. Members of EMS teams provide life-saving care to those in need 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Access to quality emergency care dramatically improves the survival and recovery rate of those who experience sudden illness or injury.
EMS has grown to fill a gap by providing important out-of-hospital care, including preventative medicine, follow-up care and access to telemedicine. Whether career or volunteer, EMS providers engage in thousands of hours of specialized training and continuing education to enhance their life-saving skills.
EMS Week is led by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) in partnership with the National Associations of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT). Explore EMSWeek.org to read stories that spotlight EMS professionals, articles centered around the ways EMS providers Stay Strong, access materials you can download and use to promote the week, and more.
The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) is observing EMS Week this year with daily themes, including health and wellness, EMS education, safety, EMS for children, “Save a Life” CPR and Stop the Bleed programs, and last but not least, recognition of the importance of EMS providers in our communities.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of EMS (NHTSA OEMS) will also be highlighting resources each day of the week with the same daily themes.
(Sources: EMSWeek.org, USFA, NHTSA OEMS)
May is Wildfire Awareness Month, a time when individuals, organizations, and communities are encouraged to consider their wildfire risk and take steps to prevent and mitigate the effects of wildfire.
Wildfire is a growing problem in the United States, and it is a problem that can’t be solved by public safety agencies alone. Individual and community participation and significant interagency collaboration are all part of the solution.
Today’s wildfires are burning more acreage than ever before, and they are burning more intensely. A June 2022 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report found that about 8 million acres, on average, burned each year in wildfires between 2017 and 2021. For comparison, this is more than double the average amount of acreage burned each year from 1987 to 1991. Additionally, between 2014 and 2018, about one-third of the burned areas that were evaluated experienced high or moderate levels of burn severity, meaning that much of the vegetation was consumed and the effects were expected to be long-lasting.
To compound the issue, more and more people are living in wildfire-prone areas. According to the proceedings from the U.S. Fire Administration’s (USFA) October 2022 U.S. Fire Administrator’s Summit on Fire Prevention and Control, about 99 million people, or a third of the U.S. population, now live in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) environment, where human structures and development meet or mix with undeveloped wildlands or vegetative fuels.
Yet most who live in these areas have no idea what WUI is or the dangers it poses.
Each year, a staggering percentage of wildfires in the United States - about 85% - are caused by human activity. Last year, this percentage was even higher. In 2022, 61,429 of the 68,988 reported wildfires (89%) were human-caused, according to the National Interagency Fire Center’s (NIFC) statistics.
All these factors taken together paint a clear picture - increasing the public’s awareness of their wildfire risk and encouraging active participation in wildfire prevention is a major part of the solution to the U.S. wildfire problem.
In fact, individual and community participation in wildfire prevention and mitigation is so important that the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy incorporates this into one of its three primary goals, which is to create fire-adapted communities (FAC).
The following are resources with prevention and safety messaging about wildfire risks that you can promote this month and throughout the year:
(Sources: DOI, NIFC, CBO, USFA, WFLC, FAC, USFS)
In a medical response to a terrorist attack involving chemical weapons, responders must have an effective rapid-triage system for identifying symptoms that are likely to have been caused by chemical agents. Responders also need to know how to administer a rapid antidote, if available. They will need to provide emergency airway support and area decontamination.
Chemical weapons attacks are fortunately low frequency events, but they are very high-risk, with the potential for many casualties. It is important to keep skillsets current and to be able to recognize the signs and symptoms of a chemical agent.
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) just published a 6-minute educational video, Toxidrome Recognition and Response in Chemical-Weapon Attacks. This video may serve as a quick refresher for emergency responders who are responsible for the medical response to chemical weapons attacks, or for those who would benefit from awareness about how to respond to these types of attacks.
The video discusses several classes of agents, the clinical presentations of persons exposed to the agents, and antidotes. It also demonstrates how first responders use knowledge of toxidromes and mitigation techniques to deal with the fictional scenario presented in the video.
(Source: NEJM)
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