Prompt life support

By Emma Sun
PILOT program for the City of Casey and Greater Dandenong is improving survival rates for people in need of immediate ambulance assistance.
The Pre-Ambulance Basic Life Support Program, run by the Department of Health and Ambulance Victoria, offers advanced life support and first aid training to members of the CFA in order to relieve waiting times.
Southern Metropolitan operations manager for the CFA Trevor Owen said the program was initially introduced to volunteer crews two years ago, and is now in its second stage where career staff are also being given full training.
“The biggest threat in the community in terms of threat to life is through cardiac arrest, and as a result to get better outcomes CFA is now providing this service for people in life -threatening cardiac situations,” he said.
“The idea is to improve response time because the earlier you get on scene, in the sense of a cardiac arrest, the better the patient outcome.”
When distress calls are made within the two municipalities, both the CFA and the ambulance are alerted.
About 120 career staff and 90 volunteer CFA crews have been through the four-day program, which allows them to respond to medical events and perform medical aid such as operating automatic defibrillators and insert airways.
Mr Owen said Ambulance Victoria have been overwhelmed with the results of the program so far.
“CFA is able to get on scene within a few minutes and is shortly followed by ambulance Victoria and that in-between time makes a huge difference in terms of patient outcome.”
He said those who make calls to Triple-zero for an ambulance and see a CFA truck rolling up need not be worried.
“Sometimes there’s an assumption that there’s been a mistake, but we can assure you that those people are fully trained to provide advanced life support and are there to provide assistance until the ambulance arrives,” he said.
“It’s a really good program, another thing that CFA and ambulance Victoria are working towards to provide a safer community.”