Emergency medical services in Sri Lanka is being established using a public/private system aimed at the provision of emergency ambulance service, including emergency care and transportation to hospitals. The Pre-Hospital Care Committee is part of the Trauma Secretariat of the Sri Lanka Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition and was established following the 2004 tsunami. The goal of the Pre-Hospital Care Sub-Committee is “During this generation and continuing for future generations, everyone in Sri Lanka will have access to trained pre-hospital medical personnel, ambulances are available to transport the sick and injured safely to hospitals, complications from harmful or inadequate pre-hospital care is eliminated so physician and nursing personnel at hospitals are delivered patients they are able to professionally treat and rehabilitate back to society as contributing citizens.” Pre-Hospital care is an essential, core component of trauma system. [1]
The emergency access number for Emergency Medical Services, reserved by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, for Sri Lanka is 1-1-0 and is operational in the districts of Colombo, Galle, Kandy, and Jaffna with plans to expand to provide national coverage. In February 2009, the Jaffna District 1-1-0 communications center was opened with the opening call placed by Mr. James Moore, the Deputy Chief of Mission for the United States Embassy (Sri Lanka). [2] [3]
The pre-hospital care sub-committee has established minimum standards for EMT education in Sri Lanka. Currently, EMTs and Pre-Hospital personnel are currently working in four distinct areas: Fire Brigades, Hospitals, Community Based Organizations, and Private Services.
All Sri Lankan EMTs are trained on international EMS standards adopted by the Trauma Secretariat of the Ministry of Healthcare & Nutrition. The Sri Lankan standards are comparable to the National Registry of EMTs of USA (United States Department of Transportation Guidelines), the Australasia Registry of EMTs, [4] and the UK College of Emergency Medicine standards.
EMT training in Sri Lanka is divided into four training levels.
EMT-Level 1: The Sri Lanka EMT-Level 1 is the first level of EMS training beyond community responders (First Aid and Advanced First Aid). Some countries refer to this level as Medical First Responders. Typically, first responders may be fire fighters, police officers, lifeguards, coaches, or teachers. Level 1 EMTs are trained in basic rescue, oxygen use, CPR, splinting, and safe ambulance operations.
EMT-Level 2: Level 2 EMTs are sometimes referred to as EMT-Basics or EMT-Ambulance Officers in other countries. Training at this level ideally requires 120–160 hours of classroom and clinical education for students to demonstrate the knowledge, attitude and skills required. Some examples of the skills of an EMT include:
- Airway management with the use of oral and nasal airways - Automatic External Defibrillators - Extrication of Trauma Patients with spinal injuries - Medical & Trauma Patient Assessments - Assisting patients with prescribed medications (NTG [gtn], aspirin, salbuterol inhalers) - Spinal Immobalization - Assessment of Vital Signs - Assisting with unexpected emergency deliveries during transport
EMT-Level 3: Level 3 EMTs or EMT-Intermediate Level is a more advanced professional level of pre-hospital care providers. Typically, level 3 EMTs are more senior and experienced EMTs and also have additional training in establishing IV cannulation, and in some areas limited access to lifesaving medications and advanced emergency airway management.
EMT-Level 4: Internationally, EMT-Paramedic represents the highest level pre-hospital care professionals. The skills, education, and protocols of Paramedics vary country to country. Although Sri Lanka will have Level-4 EMTs in the future, currently EMT-Paramedics, or Level-4 EMTs are not being trained in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Paramedics had to be sent for training in India for the 1990 service. [5]
In 2015 India offered a gift to Sri Lanka in order to mark Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's visit Harsha De Silva proposed an emergency medical service after personal experiences with short comings in the Sri Lankan system as well as the urging of doctors. It was also backed by Wickremesighe resulting in India's world reputed GVK Emergency Response Institute offering training to hundreds of Sri Lankan EMTs and Paramedics as well as donating Ambulances and granting a 7.5 million dollar grant to start the service in Colombo and Galle as a first step. The Ambulance service was based on India's 108 service. [5] The service was launched in 2016 with 250 highly trained EMTs, 250 pilots and 50 Call Centre Operators. The service gets its name from "1990" the toll free number used to call the service which is accessible from any network 24x7x365 through the Command and Control Center located in Rajagiriya. [6] The service also praised by professionals [7]
In February 2011, Med1 (Pvt) Limited opened the first internationally certified training institute in Sri Lanka authorized to issue an internationally recognized certification in CPR, ACLS, PALS, or First Aid. [8] By implementing the ILCOR approved standards, doctors, nurses, and EMS providers in Sri Lanka now have access to internationally accredited certifications and evidenced based education.
Textbook: The Ministry of Healthcare & Nutrition's Trauma Secretariat, with Medical Teams International, has published the first Emergency Medical Technician textbook in Sri Lanka in both the Singhalese and Tamil languages. This is actually the first Pre-Hospital Emergency Care textbook published in either language. Previously developed textbooks were reviewed and found ineffective because they were direct translations of North American texts and not specific to the South Asia region. Translations were literal, had grammatical errors, and lacked a national context. A team of American EMS instructors and Sri Lankan doctors reviewed EMS textbooks and wrote comparable, contextualized texts in Singhalese and Tamil languages. Two textbooks were created over sixteen months that were specific to Sri Lanka and written by native speakers. The books emphasized diseases common to Sri Lanka (including organophosphate poisoning and krait envenomation). With the help of a graphic designer, all figures and photos are culturally appropriate. The Sri Lankan Ministry of Healthcare has adopted the text for future training.
Skills DVD: To complement the textbook, and ensure skills were demonstrated uniformly in all future EMT courses, Medical Teams International and the Trauma Secretariat, produced a DVD demonstrating forty of the common Basic and Advanced Pre-Hospital skills. All skills were demonstrated by Sri Lankan EMTs or doctors in a local context. Students and instructors can choose to play each clip in English, Singhalese, or Tamil.
Emergency medical services (EMS), also known as ambulance services or paramedic services, are emergency services that provide urgent pre-hospital treatment and stabilisation for serious illness and injuries and transport to definitive care. They may also be known as a first aid squad, FAST squad, emergency squad, ambulance squad, ambulance corps, life squad or by other initialisms such as EMAS or EMARS.
An emergency medical technician (EMT), also known as an ambulance technician, is a health professional that provides emergency medical services. EMTs are most commonly found working in ambulances. In English-speaking countries, paramedics are a separate profession that has additional educational requirements, qualifications, and scope of practice.
A paramedic is a registered healthcare professional who works autonomously across a range of health and care settings and may specialise in clinical practice, as well as in education, leadership, and research.
A certified first responder is a person who has completed a course and received certification in providing pre-hospital care for medical emergencies. Certified individuals should have received much more instruction than someone who is trained in basic first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) but they are not necessarily a substitute for more advanced emergency medical care rendered by emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics. First responders typically provide advanced first aid level care, CPR, and automated external defibrillator (AED) usage. The term "certified first responder" is not to be confused with "first responder", which is a generic term referring to the first medically trained responder to arrive on scene and medically trained telecommunication operators who provide pre-arrival medical instructions as trained Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMD). Many police officers and firefighters are required to receive training as certified first responders. Advanced medical care is typically provided by EMS, although some police officers and firefighters also train to become emergency medical technicians or paramedics.
A paramedic is a healthcare professional, providing pre-hospital assessment and medical care to people with acute illnesses or injuries. In Canada, the title paramedic generally refers to those who work on land ambulances or air ambulances providing paramedic services. Paramedics are increasingly being utilized in hospitals, emergency rooms, clinics and community health care services by providing care in collaboration with registered nurses, registered/licensed practical nurses and registered respiratory therapists.
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Advanced Emergency Medical Technician - Critical Care (AEMT-CC) is an Emergency Medical Services (EMS) certification unique to New York. The curriculum for AEMT-CC's in New York is similar to that of the national standard EMT-I/99 but with a broader scope of practice. EMT-CCs are fully classified as Advanced Life Support (ALS) providers within New York and are trained in advanced airway management, including intubation, IV fluid administration, cardiac monitoring, cardiac pacing, and both synchronized and unsynchronized cardioversion, and medication usage/administration in adult and pediatric patients.
Louisville Metro Emergency Medical Services is the primary provider of pre-hospital life support and emergency care within Louisville-Jefferson County, Kentucky. LMEMS is a governmental department that averages 90,000 calls for service, both emergency and non-emergency, each year.
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Emergency Medical Service in Germany is a service of public pre-hospital emergency healthcare, including ambulance service, provided by individual German cities and counties. It is primarily financed by the German public health insurance system.
Advanced emergency medical technicians (AEMT) are providers of prehospital emergency medical services in the United States. A transition to this level of training from the emergency medical technician-intermediate (EMT-I), which have somewhat less training, began in 2013 and has been implemented by most states at this point. The AEMT is not intended to deliver definitive medical care in most cases, but rather to augment prehospital critical care and provide rapid on-scene treatment. AEMTs are most usually employed in ambulance services, working in conjunction with EMTs and paramedics, however are also commonly found in fire departments and law enforcement agencies as non-transporting first responders. Ambulances operating at the AEMT level of care are commonplace in rural areas, and occasionally found in larger cities as part of a tiered-response system, but are overall much less common than EMT- and paramedic-level ambulances. The AEMT provides a low-cost, high-benefit option to provide advanced-level care when the paramedic level of care is not feasible. The AEMT is authorized to provide limited advanced life support, which is beyond the scope of an EMT.
Emergency Medical Technician is the entry level of Emergency Medical Technician in the United States.
In the United States, the licensing of prehospital emergency medical providers (EMTs) and oversight of emergency medical services are governed at the state level. Each state is free to add or subtract levels as each state sees fit. Therefore, due to differing needs and system development paths, the levels, education requirements, and scope of practice of prehospital providers varies from state to state. Even though primary management and regulation of prehospital providers is at the state level, the federal government does have a model scope of practice including minimum skills for EMRs, EMTs, Advanced EMTs and Paramedics set through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Emergency medical responders are people who are specially trained to provide out-of-hospital care in medical emergencies. There are many different types of emergency medical responders, each with different levels of training, ranging from first aid and basic life support. Emergency medical responders have a very limited scope of practice and have the least amount of comprehensive education, clinical experience or clinical skills of emergency medical services (EMS) personnel. The EMR program is not intended to replace the roles of emergency medical technicians or paramedics and their wide range of specialties. Emergency medical responders typically assist in rural regions providing basic life support where pre-hospital health professionals are not available due to limited resources or infrastructure.
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