The Importance of med cover
Telephonic Advice: This can make the difference between life and death for you or your child. While you wait for the ambulance (or helicopter) what do you do? There is a lot you can do, even if you had no training.
- If the patient’s body has been penetrated by a foreign object (knife, metal {in a car accident} glass, wood – do you remove it? MedCover will assist telephonically. It depends on many factors (where is the wound? how big is the object? How deep is the penetration?) If you do not remove it, how do you stop the bleeding? A tourniquet? This can be dangerous, leading to the loss of a limb. It needs to be released from time to time. If you try to stop the bleeding with bandages around the object, this can be dangerous – again, where is the wound? Would your activity cause the foreign object to move, causing more damage to organs?
- If the patient consumed something poisonous (paraffin, tablets, poison, bad food) – do you try to induce vomiting? How do you safely induce vomiting? What bodily reactions can you expect? The MedCover qualified medical practitioner will talk you through it.
Benefits
24 HOUR Emergency Response
24 HOUR Emergency Medical Transportation
24 HOUR General Medical Advice and Information HOTLINE
24 HOUR Emergency Medical Advice and Assistance line
Medical evacuation
The time that lapses between the medical emergency happening and the patient receiving treatment is often more important than the quality of service received later.
- The medical personnel on the ambulance have training, equipment and medicine on the vehicle that can keep a person alive until he reaches a hospital. The quicker they reach the patient, the quicker he can be stabilised.
- Treatment of the actual trauma will mean nothing if the patient is not alive. You can have the best brain surgeon waiting at the hospital, but he can do nothing to save a patient who arrived dead (or so weak that they cannot risk operating on him)
- With every minute that passes, a patient’s chance of recovery is reduced. A simple stab wound to the abdomen can become fatal after 1 hour (through blood loss; the body going into shock) We have seen TV footage where the patient could have walked to the hospital, but because he waited for an ambulance that arrived I hour later, he died
Golden Hour
Dr. R Adams Cowley is credited with promoting this concept, first in his capacity as a military surgeon and later as head of the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center. The concept of the “Golden Hour” may have been derived from French military World War I data. The R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center section of the University of Maryland Medical Center’s website quotes Cowley as saying, “There is a golden hour between life and death. If you are critically injured you have less than 60 minutes to survive. You might not die right then; it may be three days or two weeks later – but something has happened in your body that is irreparable”
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