The most critical treatment you provide is airway management. Whether intubating the patient in cardiac arrest, dislodging an obstruction, or simply assisting respirations, the speed and effectiveness of your treatment as a paramedic can mean the difference between life and death for your patients. So, let’s review three critical airway management steps you can’t afford to miss: assessment, equipment, and intervention.

Emergency medical responders are responsible for saving lives every day. Their knowledge and skills enable them to quickly assess and treat patients who may be unconscious, unable to communicate, or located in remote terrain.

A crash cart is an integral component of emergency patient care. Although most emergency departments use these carts to treat cardiac arrest, they can also treat other emergency conditions and ensure that providers can promptly attend to patients at a high risk of serious morbidities and mortality.

Tactical medicine, sometimes called SWAT medicine, is a high-stakes branch of emergency medical services (EMS) that caters to the needs of law enforcement, the military, and other first responders. If your organization serves the general public, then you might think that tactical medical care is well outside of your wheelhouse. 

The emergence of the COVID-19 virus saw an unprecedented surge in airway emergencies, with millions of people across the globe infected. Whether your agency previously suctioned people daily or suction was new to your repertoire, odds are you’ve done, and continue to do so more than ever before.

A hospital visit can save a patient’s life. It can also destroy it if they pick up a virulent healthcare-associated infection (HAI). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that on any given day, 1 in 31 hospital patients has at least one HAI.

In October of 2012, Superstorm Sandy hit New York City with a vengeance. As area hospitals braced for the storm’s impact, administrators had no reason to fear their back-up generators would fail to function if the city’s power grid went down.

They were wrong.

COVID changed virtually everything about respiratory care. For many agencies, respiratory emergencies requiring suction were once relatively rare, especially in some regions. Now, as the virus persists and mutates, they’re a standard part of daily care, and every care provider must become a suction expert.

Respiratory emergencies come in many forms. It could be an asthmatic who has suffered since childhood, a COPD patient who still smokes a pack a day, or a near-drowning who was pulled from the deep end of the pool. Whatever the crisis, as an emergency responder, you are called on to treat it. 

As a paramedic or EMT, your first responsibility in patient care is to secure a patent airway. Whether you are placing an EOA to elevate the tongue of an overdosed patient, suctioning the oropharynx of a trauma code, or inserting an endotracheal tube for a patient who has stopped breathing, a thorough understanding of the structures that make up the respiratory tract is a must.