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The Seattle & King County Emergency Medical Services System is a fire-based two-tier response system providing prehospital basic and advanced life support services. There are six paramedic provider programs in the system. The Seattle Fire Department operates Seattle Medic One. The program is funded by the city's general fund and has a different administrative structure than the five other Medic One programs.〔EMS Division 2002, 2002 Strategic Plan Update pg. 53〕 The five other Medic One programs with the exception of King County Medic One are operated by fire departments under a formal contract with the EMS Division of Public Health - Seattle & King County.〔EMS Division 2002, 2002 Strategic Plan Update pg. 24〕 King County Medic One is directly operated by the EMS Division. The modern EMS system in King County began operation in 1970 with 15 paramedics staffing one paramedic unit in Seattle. In 2009 there are 255 paramedics〔(The local action plan to improve community cardiac arrest survival ), section 7〕 from six paramedic programs staffing 26 paramedic units.〔Seattle Fire Department 2008, pg. 2〕〔EMS Division 2009, pg. 75〕 The system is a dynamic layered response system. An EMS response to an emergency begins with a telephone call to 9-1-1. Calls are transferred from a primary call taker to emergency medical call taker who gathers information from the caller, gives instructions to the caller, and determines what types of emergency personnel to send. For very serious and life-threatening emergencies firefighters trained in basic life support and paramedics trained in advanced life support respond simultaneously. Paramedics transport patients in critical condition. For less severe emergencies only firefighters will be dispatched. Basic life support personnel from either a fire department or private ambulance company transport non-critical patients. ==History== In 1968, motivated by the work of Frank Pantridge, cardiologist Leonard Cobb proposed to the chief of the Seattle Fire Department, Gordon Vickery, training firefighters to treat cardiac arrest. The department was attractive to Cobb because it already provided first aid and tracked its performance electronically.〔Cardiac Arrest: The Science and Practice of Resuscitation Medicine, pg. 20〕 In 1969, they trained fifteen firefighters and used a grant from the Washington/Alaska Regional Medical Program to convert a large motor home into a Mobile Coronary Care Unit (nicknamed “Moby Pig”) which would respond to calls with both the firefighter paramedics and a physician on board. The first Medic One call was on March 7, 1970 and during the program's first year, 31 lives were saved. The following year the program was changed, replacing the on-board doctors with fire department paramedics given advanced special training and remote access to the doctors. In 1974, TV news-magazine, ''60 Minutes'', profiled the success of Medic One, lauding the high standards of training and education provided by the Seattle training program. Correspondent Morley Safer declared, “If you have to have a heart attack, have it in Seattle.” A phrase still used frequently in conjunction with Medic One, due to its continued success which is reflected in the area's high survival rate for heart attacks and their comprehensive CPR training program.〔 That same year Medic One incorporated as a privately held, non-profit organization and established the Medic One Foundation, which works on behalf of both fund raising and the expansion of the program. The program is financed by local property tax levies, which are voted on by the public every six years, along with private and corporate donations. Medic One had saved 655 patients from cardiac arrest by 1976 and this success was gaining national and international attention. Medic One service was expanded into the rest of King County in 1976〔Belew, Ellie 2004, pg. 78 - 79 (History of Local 2595 )〕 and, in conjunction with the Medic One Foundation, other counties in Washington State began paramedic programs to serve their communities. In 1979, Cobb and UW professor Mickey Eisenberg began training fire department emergency medical technician - Basics (EMT-Bs) to perform the administration of defibrillation for patients in cardiac arrest since the EMTs were usually at the patient’s side several minutes before the paramedics. Eisenberg began training 9-1-1 dispatchers to provide instructions to lay-persons on how to perform CPR in 1982. With the introduction of automatic external defibrillators (AEDs) in 1984, EMTs were able to defibrillate patients in cardiac arrest even quicker.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Seattle & King County Emergency Medical Services System」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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