Kansas State University

As part of our winter series on business topics, I decided to share this article called “Working with EMS Professionals” from the Tree Care Industry magazine.

The article reminds readers of some very basic points, but they are things that people might forget about in the heat of an emergency. Here are two tips, and the article provides more.

• Does everyone on the crew know the address of where they are? Those cell phone locations services don’t always work, and sometimes they are WAY off. Make sure everyone (or at least more than ONE person – that might be the person who is unconscious!) knows where you are.
• Be prepared to clearly and concisely describe the nature of the emergency, such as how many patients there are (if there are two patients, they might need two ambulances).

For the full article, go to the following link. It’s just a couple of pages long. Click through the e-pages to the page labeled 42.

http://tcia.org/digital_magazine/tci-magazine/2015/12/index.html

On campus a few years ago I came across a bike accident scene, and two people had dialed 911 right as I was walking up. They were clearly panicked, had no idea of how to describe where they were on campus, and time was being wasted. So, I asked for the phone and I was able to talk to the dispatcher and move things along.  (A whole other topic is to make sure your workers have some basic first aid skills too. In this case I was able to do a few basic things until the EMTs arrived. Those two other people were pretty clueless…).