Changing EMS Vocabulary
By Mike McEvoy, Ph.D., REMT-P, RN, CCRN
The term "ambulance driver" boils the blood of seasoned
EMTs. Likewise, injury prevention specialists would remove the word "accident"
from the dictionary. Emergency doctors would like the term "emergency room"
to go away forever. As professions evolve, so does vocabulary. Knowing
and speaking the latest terminology says something about your familiarity
with other professionals you interact with.
Eons ago, an emergency room was a small space tucked
in hospitals where moonlighting physicians saw patients who had no primary
care provider. Consider the changes in just the past two decades: board
certified emergency medicine specialists working in multimillion-dollar
facilities caring for the whole spectrum of medical, surgical, and traumatic
problems. Rightfully, it's proper etiquette nowadays to use the term "Emergency
Department," or ED.
The word "accident" implies a chance occurrence,
yet research has shown that injuries are anything but fate. Through injury
surveillance, highly predictable patterns, distinct risk factors, and obviously
at-risk populations can all be identified. The Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) ranks injury as the leading cause of death for persons in the United
States between the ages of 1 and 34 years. Despite this, we continue
to refer to trauma as accidental. Trauma is no accident.
To reflect current science, the word "accident"
must be erased from public safety vocabulary. Motor vehicle accidents (MVAs)
have long been called motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) by medical and injury
prevention folks. It's time for dispatch centers and prehospital care providers
to adopt new vocabulary. Trauma has causes other than motor vehicle crashes,
and even these are not real "accidents." Make it a habit to use the term
"injuries" when describing traumatic incidents unrelated to crashes. This
mindset will not only reset our own focus but also let the public know
that trauma is not accidental and that injuries are preventable.
Safety and injury prevention are components of public
safety and of medicine. As emergency medical service providers, we have
a duty to model safe behaviors. That responsibility begins with knowing
the kinds of injuries your service responds to and how they could be prevented.
Make it a habit to learn the unique injury patterns in your community.
Consider ways you might reduce the toll of injuries to citizens. There
are innumerable national, state, and regionally based injury prevention
initiatives with which fire and EMS can partner to reduce injuries. These
include bicycle helmet and seat belt programs, child safety seat checks,
and public access defibrillation, to name a few.
Change your vocabulary to reflect the fact that
injuries are not accidental. The next time you respond to a motor vehicle
crash or stop by your local emergency department, your new mindset will
reflect a modern view of public safety and medicine.
The above commentary points out the fact that
most if not all injuries can be prevented. Below are some tips and information
that may allow you to avoid injuries in the future. Many of these items
are obvious, but, sometimes stating the obvious is crucial to changing
the mindset.
