SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
LA Paramedics Told Not To Transport Some Patients With Low Chance Of Survival:
The Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services Agency issued a directive Monday that ambulance crews should only administer bottled oxygen to patients whose oxygen saturation levels fall below 90%.
In a separate memo from the county's EMS Agency, paramedic crews have been told not to transfer patients who experience cardiac arrest unless spontaneous circulation can be restored on the scene.
Both measures announced Monday, which were issued by the agency's medical director, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, were taken in an attempt to get ahead of an expected surge to come following the winter holidays.
Many hospitals in the region "have reached a point of crisis and are having to make very tough decisions about patient care," Dr. Christina Ghaly, the LA County director of health services said at a briefing Monday.
[...] "We do not believe that we are yet seeing the cases that stemmed from the Christmas holiday," Ghaly added. "This, sadly, and the cases from the recent New Year's holiday, is still before us, and hospitals across the region are doing everything they can to prepare."
Los Angeles County hospitals are so inundated, officials said they're just trying to provide the best care they can for the people who need it.
The memo sent out on December 28 by the medical director of L.A. County's Emergency Medical Services agency, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, addressed how first responders should treat stroke and heart attack patients, saying a patient should be treated at the scene first and have a pulse during resuscitation before transporting them to the hospital.
[...] The medical director of L.A. County's Emergency Services Agency, Dr. Marianne Gausche-Hill, assured CBS2 that officials continue to do all they can to save patients' lives at the scene and the hospital, as they always have.
"We are not abandoning resuscitation," Gausche-Hill said. "We are absolutely doing best practice resuscitation and that is do it in the field, do it right away... What we're asking is that — which is slightly different than before — is that we are emphasizing the fact that transporting these patients arrested leads to very poor outcomes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday January 05 2021, @09:01PM (2 children)
Kidding, but I can't help but wonder if we could at least learn from their cooperative society
You don't need to look at religious nuts who refuse modern technology to see a good example of a cooperative society. You just need to look outside the US borders; Asian nations in particular are good at this. Western European nations also do a better job of this.
Basically, this is a cultural problem, and this pandemic has shown just how ill-equipped America's "fuck you, I got mine" society is to handle common threats like this. I don't see any way of fixing it before it collapses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05 2021, @09:23PM
Oh Jeez, you're not better than Americans. Go take your "little brother" competition complex somewhere else.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 05 2021, @09:37PM
No need to mischaracterize the Amish that way. Visit some. Work with some. You'll find they have and use "modern technology". They shun being dependent on larger society- you know, the one you rightly railed against. If you got to know some you'll find they're not so "religious" as you think. They're just much better at being cohesive, like the Asians, Europeans, and many others. They get criticized for being too separatist, but I can't blame them.
America is, almost by definition and certainly its founding a collection of independent, sometimes fiercely so, people. Even our name illustrates it. When push comes to shove, we will cooperate. IMHO, the problem is too much BS happening. Why are there anti-maskers? Because there's so much general BS in the news media that nobody quite knows what to believe. Some believe masks work (I wear them), some think it's all lies. Find me a clean clear solid reliable news source. No question that the year leading up to election has greatly messed up everyone and everything in the news / media.
I think, hope at least, that most Americans will "do the right thing" when necessary.