Tag Archives: emergency actions

Healthcare – call for help

The Call for Help……Most Cities 9-1-1

  1. If an injured person is in distress but is breathing, phone for help at once!!
  2. If the victim is not breathing: phone first, then help, but if someone else is available have them call while you help.
  3. What to say:
    1. State the nature of your emergency – this helps the dispatcher mobilize the proper resources.
    2. Give the address including the town name and any special description of how to get to the victim. – if you lose contact with the dispatcher they will at least know where to come looking for you.
    3. Give the phone number from which you are calling. – so that they can call you back for more info and or to give further instructions.
    4. Describe the victim’s condition as best you can: Burned, Broken bones, Difficulty breathing, etc.
    5. Give your name. – So they know where the information came from and so that       they can keep the story straight.
    6. Do not hang up!!  Let emergency persons end the conversation.  They may have questions to ask you or special information to give you about what you can do until help arrives.

Some points to ponder. You should know what the ‘back’ number is to the police dispatcher. Back in about 2002 in our town, there was an incident where all the 911 calls started ringing at somebody’s house. The first few times this happened the home owner  [who was retired] thought that it was a prank. Then he realized that it was not a joke and called the back number for the dispatcher to relay information, in effect doing dispatch. This went on for 45 minutes – an hour until the phone company got it figured out. Now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. The phone company was doing some maintenance work on the main switching system when a small wire had fallen across a switching node causing the problem. And now the really odd part, what are the chances of the homeowner being home during the day when this happened so that he could be answering the phone, knowing what the back number was and being able to handle the situation? The last bit of odd with this was that he was retired and used to work as a police dispatcher in our town. ;]

Many places have what is called an enhanced 911 system which will tell them where you are and other interesting info. HOWEVER sometimes the system has old info and wasn’t updated so the address on record may not be correct. We had that happen to us one time years ago when I had to call for back up as where I worked had been broken into. The 911 system had the company’s old address from over a year prior, so ALWAYS tell the dispatcher where you actually are when you call.

In a major disaster, phone lines to emergency medical services may be overloaded or damaged.  You need to consider other forms of communications.