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Concept
Medical emergency
Summary
A medical emergency is an acute injury or illness that poses an immediate risk to a person's life or long-term health, sometimes referred to as a situation risking "life or limb". These emergencies may require assistance from another, qualified person, as some of these emergencies, such as cardiovascular (heart), respiratory, and gastrointestinal cannot be dealt with by the victim themselves. Dependent on the severity of the emergency, and the quality of any treatment given, it may require the involvement of multiple levels of care, from first aiders through emergency medical technicians, paramedics, emergency physicians and anesthesiologists.
Any response to an emergency medical situation will depend strongly on the situation, the patient involved, and availability of resources to help them. It will also vary depending on whether the emergency occurs whilst in hospital under medical care, or outside medical care (for instance, in the street or alone at home).
For emergencies starting outside medical care, a key component of providing proper care is to summon the emergency medical services (usually an ambulance), by calling for help using the appropriate local emergency telephone number, such as 999, 911, 111, 112 or 000. After determining that the incident is a medical emergency (as opposed to, for example, a police call), the emergency dispatchers will generally run through a questioning system such as AMPDS in order to assess the priority level of the call, along with the caller's name and location.
Those who are trained to perform first aid can act within the bounds of the knowledge they have, whilst awaiting the next level of definitive care.
Those who are not able to perform first aid can also assist by remaining calm and staying with the injured or ill person. A common complaint of emergency service personnel is the propensity of people to crowd around the scene of a victim, as it is generally unhelpful, making the patient more stressed, and obstructing the smooth working of the emergency services.
Official source
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