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EMS Safety

EMS, or emergency medical service, personnel face physical and environmental hazards on a daily basis. Safety is a constant issue, but EMS personnel must ensure that is does not become an afterthought, rather than a priority, just because it is ever present.

  1. EMS Transportation Safety

    • According to Objective Safety , EMS personnel respond to an estimated 30 million emergency calls and an equal number of routine transports each year. The fatality rate for ambulance crashes is higher than that for passenger vehicles and trucks.

    Scene Safety

    • EMS workers must remain alert, whatever the nature of an emergency or the acuity of a patient, to the potential hazards of the scene of an emergency. These include a patient becoming violent, intentionally injuring a worker or someone else or creating a situation that is generally unsafe.

    Workplace Safety Culture

    • The results of a survey by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, published in September 2010, revealed significant variation in workplace safety culture amongst EMS agencies in the United States. Those that scored highest for safety typically had fewer employees, fewer patient contacts annually and a higher percentage of acute patients.

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