What Do Paramedic Do?

What do paramedics do? Paramedics provide emergency and non emergency pre-hospital medical care to persons who require help outside of hospitals. The help that paramedics may provide can range from treating a multitude of medical conditions and traumatic injuries, through to psychiatric problems and resolving complex situational problems.

Paramedics can do the following range of activities during their day:

1. Provide a wide range of pharmaceutical interventions through injections, intraveneous injections, intranasal sprays, sublingual tablets, nebulisers, transdermally and subcutaneous injections.

2. Immobilize fracture limbs with splints.

3. Transport rapidly with the use of warning lights and sirens to assist in getting through traffic.

4. Deliver babies.

5. Look after burns victims.

6. Resuscitate cardiac arrest patients through defibrillation, CPR, intubation and IV drug administration.

7. Attend motor vehicle crashes.

8. Take people to hospital who have a welfare card and don’t want to see their own GP.

As a paramedic, it is often important to remember that your role is to help people and not necessarily with a medical problem. Often paramedics are called by people who just don’t know what else to do.

What do paramedics do on a shift?

 

Paramedics normally do a broad range of activities on any given shift. Starting with checking the Ambulance and signing out their scheduled drugs (such as morphine). Throughout the day paramedics will respond to a number of emergency and non emergency cases. Paramedics will most likely get stuck in hospital at some stage, try and find food on the run, have a good laugh with their work partner, see something completely  new and see a dozen things that you’ve seen a thousand times before. Finally paramedics will refuel their Ambulance, wash both inside and outside of their Ambulance, restock what they have used or were missing throughout the day, complete any health care records that were not completed throughout the day, sign drugs back into a safe and sign off for the night ready to do it all again!