It’s winter, and the cold presents unique challenges to first responders. If you didn’t do it this year, take the time now and before next winter to take stock of your equipment and winterize your first responder kit. Here are five the steps to take: 

It’s a Sunday evening, and your team is alerted by dispatch that a 73-year-old woman was eating dinner at her son's house when she started having chest pain and difficulty breathing. She's still conscious but is in a good deal of discomfort, and you know that you’ll have to perform a respiratory assessment upon arrival. While riding to the scene, you also start thinking about the special considerations you’ll need to take in the assessment because of the patient’s age.

Because there are always many unknowns, preparing for a disaster is an enormous undertaking. For rural hospitals, this challenge is further amplified due to issues such as remote location, limited resources, and staffing shortages. Yet by actively preparing for the types of disasters that rural hospitals are most likely to face, such difficulties can be lessened.

Let's face it: Pediatric patients can be intimidating. They're small, they cry a lot, they require different medication dosages, and, fortunately, we don't run into them with great frequency.

In the event of a pandemic or other health emergency, hospital emergency departments and intensive care units can become overwhelmed. Doctors, nurses, and medical personnel are being asked to go above and beyond to protect patients — and to do it quickly.

Airway obstructions are common and potentially lethal emergencies, especially among vulnerable populations such as children and geriatrics. Obstruction from a foreign body is the most common airway obstruction in young children. Among geriatrics, obstructive airway diseases, dysphagia, and aspiration are more prevalent. The odds of airway obstruction increase with age. One study of geriatric patients found that at least 10% of seniors who undergo spirometric studies may have an airway obstruction.

It’s important to regularly reevaluate your team’s knowledge of common bleeding disorders, their symptoms, and the unique challenges they present for EMS personnel during airway suctioning and treatment.

Here are a few questions for all you paramedics out there: When was the last time you decompressed a tension pneumothorax? How many surgical airways have you performed? Have you ever delivered a baby in the prehospital setting? And how many times have you performed a rapid sequence intubation?

Flight medics face some of the highest job stress levels of any first responders, often responding to patients for whom seconds matter. In this rapidly changing environment, diligent airway management is critical, particularly for trauma survivors, neonates, and people with serious respiratory health conditions.

The quality of care you can provide patients is inseparable from the quality of the devices you have available. After all, it doesn’t matter how knowledgeable you are about choking if you can’t clear a patient’s airway.