EMTs response to food poisoning

[rationtin440]

The posts about hated stuff in the MREs, and the unfortunate experience that Woodland had with the maple muffin top, made me wonder if the EMTs that we have here in the forums have ever had to respond to food poisoning incidents at restaurants, or even bad rations. Kind of an odd question but I'm curious what the procedures are for treating the victim en route to the hospital, as each level of EMT has different options depending on training and qualifications. For soldiers in the field being treated by medics for example, IVs were usually administered if de-hydration occured, but as civilians, some EMTs are not trained or qualified at their level to administer IVs.

[housil]

I did.

Back in 2011, 134 German soldiers got sick from food poisoning in Afghanistan. But not from rations, from the mess hall lunch.

The incidents I had to respond were stuff like single persons that eat "wrong" mushrooms. In the first place Russian immigrants. It very common there to collect mushrooms in the woods to eat them. Not so common are their skills in "poison mushrooms" and "edible mushrooms".

More often we had to respond to nursing homes etc. when they got a bad food delivered or somebody brought some e.g. Noro Virus, Salmonella etc. in like on big cruise ships.
The worst/biggest incident we had was back in 2010. WE had to deal with four nursing home filled up with infected persons.

There is no special training to treat "food poisoning". It´s at least "a poisoning" and you treat it like any other poisoning depends to the cause.
We also treat any symptoms the pt have.

Dehydration => IVs
Vomiting => antiemetics
etc...

You can´t work on an ACLS ambulance over here without being a paramedic. So it´s not a trained or qualified problem (over here).
Especially we have not the "paramedic system" over here like in the US, we use the "paramedic + ER Doc" system over here. When ever there is "danger for life" for the pt (stroke, heart attack, CPR, seriously injured etc), they do not only dispatch an ambulance, but also always (!) an ER-Doc unit together with the ambulance. The ER Doc unit is either a car with ER-Doc + Paramedic or the life flight with flight medic + ER nurse, not "only" flight nurses.

Means we start ER room treatment right at the scene. The pt is fully treated before we bring him into the hospital. To bad I can´t post any pictures over here...

[rationtin440]

Thanks for reply housil! I was thinking after I posted it that it sounded strange for me to be asking since I had alot of medical training myself in the military. What I had meant to ask was what levels of EMT training allow you and other EMTs in forums to do what levels of care for food poisoning cases. When I was a medic we could give IVs in the field if someone ate a bad MRE or MCI, but if we responded to a case of food poisoning off base we had to get a paramedic or someone who was civilian trained to give IVs. It was very confusing because I had taken an EMT course that was a regular civilian EMT-basic, and we were not qualified to give IVs, but as medics responding to a call ON the base we were allowed to. Also say there is some kind of major event, natural or man made, in your part of the world, would Bundeswehr medics be permitted to give civilian victims IVs and intubate them or could they only work on other soldiers? Here it all depends on the situation, for example we had a severe winter storm here in Massachusetts several years ago, and my unit was activated. Eventhough we were deployed with all our ambulance vehicles and medical gear, we were told that if we responded to a civilian situation we had to wait for paramedics to show up if the patient needed IVs or intubation, eventhough we were fully trained for both procedures. Pretty confusing, but it was to avoid lawsuits....no lie, that was the major concern.

[housil]

When I was a medic we could give IVs in the field if someone ate a bad MRE or MCI, but if we responded to a case of food poisoning off base we had to get a paramedic or someone who was civilian trained to give IVs. It was very confusing because I had taken an EMT course that was a regular civilian EMT-basic, and we were not qualified to give IVs, but as medics responding to a call ON the base we were allowed to.

The thing over here is, who is the provider of public EMS. EMS (over here) is a public service, even the private run organisations must play by our rules means you are not allowed to make profit (EMS over here is non-profit).
The military has it´s own EMS, but they are not allowed to participate into civilian EMS (except for 2... 3... exceptions)

Also say there is some kind of major event, natural or man made, in your part of the world, would Bundeswehr medics be permitted to give civilian victims IVs and intubate them or could they only work on other soldiers? Here it all depends on the situation, for example we had a severe winter storm here in Massachusetts several years ago, and my unit was activated. Eventhough we were deployed with all our ambulance vehicles and medical gear, we were told that if we responded to a civilian situation we had to wait for paramedics to show up if the patient needed IVs or intubation, eventhough we were fully trained for both procedures. Pretty confusing, but it was to avoid lawsuits....no lie, that was the major concern.

Pretty similar over here.
Actually as we have the (civilan) EMS and the civil protection, the military is not involved in EMS. The military EMT/Paramedics come to our stations as interns to keep in training on real patients under our supervision (I´m a senior medic and medic CPR trainer).

When such a major event happens, it´s up to us, the civil protection, to ask the military for help and they do.

The biggest natural disaster I was was the flood in 2002. At the first day, I was commanding 70 ACLS ambulances



to evacuate hospitals and nursing homes.



In civil protection, we EMS divided into units like a military platoon.
That was my unit:

Command car with local Red Cross guy that lead us.
Two (Red Cross) civil protection ambulances. Equiped like BLS ambulances, but 4 stretchers like the military. One ACLS ambulance, me + EMT as driver.
We "patrolled" in a allotted area to administer medical care to the peoples but also the civil protection workers.


We slept inside/besides our ambulances


Here we were on our own. I could call an ER Doc for back up, but we had to evacuated 3.500 patiens in the first day out of hospitals and nursing home so we couldn´t call a Doc for each emergency if we could deal with it at our own.

We got fed from mobile kitchen trailers


One unit had to convert the airport terminal into a 150 bed field hospital with 8 ICU beds




We brought the patiens to the field hospital, they were treated from Doctors. Next step was, we brought them on the airfield. The German Army (Airforce) took them over and flew them out all over Germany to be treated




The Bundeswehr didn´t send any medical units, we were plenty. At least we were at the first ~600 Ambulances. But we needed the military for the real "big business".

[rationtin440]

Thanks for the reply housil and the waaaaay cool pics! One thing that has always been a source of interest to me is the different medical/EMT/emergency management systems of countries. I met a friend of mine who just came back from the Peoples' Republic of China after spending time over there as a student studying "environmental health" (his words) and he mentioned what he saw of the Chinese EMT/Emergency response system as part of his studies. "Not quite as fancy as the west, but pretty efficient for so large a population," were his words. He also met and became friends with some Chinese PLA medics, whom he described as "very professional and extremely caring."