Emergency Medical Service professionals are an imperative part of our society, as most of you reading this know. That is why we celebrate National EMS Week. From May 21 to May 27, EMS providers are recognized for their day-to-day civic duties as well as sometimeslife-saving efforts. While you may think they should be honored everyday, it wasn’t always the case in American history. In fact, the modern American EMS field is only about five decades old.
Highway driving was new in the 1950s, and unfortunately, accidental injuries and preventable deaths due to inadequate care after car accidents also became all too familiar. Doctors were required to pull double duty, and it overextended them, creating the push for new types of medical personnel that were needed to step in to take over these cases. There was no choice but to have funeral home workers step in. Government officials felt they were suited for the job because they were able to transport people in hearses, but really only trained in basic first aid, so it wasn’t a lasting option.
It had become a crisis, with the only way out being military medics returning from Vietnam, essentially forming the backbone of EMS. The University of Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center began replicating techniques used to tend to the wounded in Vietnam, such as medevac transports,and in civilian settings in the U.S. The first nationally recognized curriculum for emergency medical technician-ambulance (EMT-A) was published in 1969 and is considered to be “the birth of modern EMS”.
After this, the work of emergency medical service professionals continued to improve and gained more respect among the community. In 1974, President Gerald Ford authorized EMS Week to celebrate emergency medical service professionals and the important work they do in our nation’s communities. Almost 50 years later, we still honor and respect those who continue to work in this field. If you know an EMS professional, please say thank you this week and always. If you are an EMS professional reading this, thank you to you and we hope that you enjoyed this historic reminder.