Emergency medical technician facts for kids

The Star of Life, a global symbol of the emergency medical service

Learning to evacuate an injured person

The emergency medical technician (EMT) is a job where a person works on an ambulance and takes care of sick and hurt people. EMTs long ago were called "ambulance drivers," since much of the work is to bring people to an emergency room. The other main duty is first aid including:

• Do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and give electric shocks to a person's chest if their heart is beating in a way that could kill them
• Give oxygen (or force oxygen into a person's lungs) if they stop breathing or are not breathing well enough to survive
• Insert a breathing tube down someone's windpipe to help them breathe better
• Stop hemorrhaging (bleeding so bad that it will kill a person if not stopped)
• Treating burns
• Treat very bad physical trauma (injuries)
• Deliver a baby
• Treat broken bones, dislocated joints, sprains, and wounds

Laws

In the United States, each state decides what their EMTs can do. Things like the examples in the list above are things that every EMT in every state can do. But each's states treatment protocols - their rules for what their EMTs can do - are different. For example:

• In Massachusetts, EMTs can give medicines to treat heart attacks, breathing emergencies (like asthma attacks), anaphylaxis, very low blood sugar, and overdoses.
• In New Hampshire, EMTs are allowed to place a rescue airway in a patient who cannot breathe. This means they will place a tube down the patient's throat, then force oxygen into the lungs through the tube.

Related pages

• Emergency medical services in the United Kingdom

Images for kids

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  A Toronto critical care ambulance