In the personal injury area of law, it is not uncommon for the children of clients to be transported by ambulance after auto accidents, injuries, and the like, but parents should be aware that the emergency medical service (EMS) transporting your child might not have a lot of experience with pediatrics. In fact this lack of experience has been found to be the possible main problem leading to EMS errors in the United States.
Thirteen percent is the percentage in the U.S. of pediatric ambulance rides, and only one percent of those are advanced life support transports. Therefore, EMS works simply do not get in much experience, if any at all, which leads to anxiety, lack of child-sized equipment, lack of proficiency, and mistakes. EMS personnel have admitted that their anxiety in working with children, as well as little to no experience with pediatric breathing tubes, as the main contributors to mistakes. The anxiety can be from the lack of experience with pediatric patients, the challenges that present, and the natural anxiety that comes with seeing a child in danger. The research thus states that it would be helpful to do further research on how this anxiety develops and how it can be better prevented in EMS personnel. It would also be helpful for personnel to do more practice and simulation scenarios with pediatric sized equipment and mannequins.
If you or a loved one has been injured as a result of an accident, injury, or mistake by EMS or medical personnel, feel free to contact Inserra & Kelley Law Offices as you may be entitled to compensation. Inserra & Kelley wants to keep parents in the loop of everything that could endanger the welfare of their most precious cargo, their children.