From 911 Call to Emergency Room

The emergency chain is the most time-critical sequence in this museum. For a cardiac arrest, survival falls with every minute without CPR and defibrillation; for major trauma, surgeons speak of the "golden hour".

Dispatch

The United States adopted 911 as a national emergency number in 1968. Today's dispatchers use computer-aided dispatch, caller location data and scripted protocols that let them rank urgency and coach a bystander through CPR before the ambulance arrives.

The field

EMTs provide basic life support; paramedics provide advanced life support. They work under medical direction and written protocols. A stroke or heart-attack patient may be taken past the nearest hospital to a specialised center, because the right hospital beats the closest one.

The hospital

The emergency department sorts patients by acuity, not by arrival time. Around a single patient may stand an emergency physician, nurses, a respiratory therapist managing the airway, a radiologic technologist taking the X-ray or CT scan, a phlebotomist drawing blood, and a patient-care technician. Out of sight, sterile processing technicians prepare instruments, pharmacy technicians prepare medications, and medical coders translate the visit into the codes that pay for it.

Programs on this chain

EMT/Paramedic, practical nursing, nursing assistant, respiratory therapy, limited X-ray, medical assisting (phlebotomy), surgical technology, sterile processing, pharmacy technician, medical billing and coding.