40 Fun Facts About Paramedics

The face of CPR manikin Resusci Anne came from the death mask of a young woman reputedly drowned in which river?

The Seine gave the unidentified woman her nickname, the Unknown Woman of the Seine. A Norwegian toymaker picked a female face because he thought male trainees would be reluctant to kiss a man's.

Which businesses ran many early American ambulance services because their vehicles could carry a patient lying down?

Funeral homes owned hearses, long the only vehicles that could carry a person flat. They stayed among America's most common ambulance providers until the early 1970s.

Which Bee Gees disco hit, at about 103 beats per minute, is used to teach the right pace for CPR chest compressions?

Stayin' Alive sits inside the 100 to 120 compressions a minute that rescuers aim for. The American Heart Association built a whole CPR campaign around the song.

When the word paramedic first appeared in the 1950s, it described a military medic who reached the wounded by what?

Parachute plus medic gave the first paramedics their name in 1951. The modern meaning, a medical technician, only arrived around 1970 as a shortening of paramedical.

The yellow-and-green chequered Battenburg markings on British ambulances are named after what kind of food?

A cake called Battenberg shows the same squares when it is sliced. The lighter squares are fluorescent, so the vehicle stands out in daylight, at dusk and at dawn.

Which future animation pioneer forged his birth date to drive an ambulance in France just after the First World War?

Walt Disney had been turned away by the army as too young, so he altered his birth certificate and signed up as a driver in 1918. He decorated the side of his ambulance with cartoons.

Which city introduced 999 in 1937, the world's oldest telephone number reserved for calling the emergency services?

London got 999 first, within a 12-mile radius of Oxford Circus. Days after the launch, its first call led to a burglar being caught in the act.

Which explosive chemical, heavily diluted, do paramedics give under the tongue to ease chest pain from the heart?

Nitroglycerin widens the blood vessels, which eases the load on the heart. The medicine is the same chemical as the explosive, diluted until it can no longer go off.

Paramedics carry naloxone, often as a nasal spray, to reverse a life-threatening overdose of which class of drugs?

Opioids can stop a person breathing, and naloxone can restore it about two minutes after an injection into a vein. It has been approved for overdoses in the United States since 1971.

Which effect, first described by a physicist in 1842, makes an ambulance siren seem to drop in pitch as it passes?

Doppler is the name, after the physicist Christian Doppler. Each sound wave from an approaching siren starts closer to you than the last, which raises the pitch until the vehicle goes by.

Paramedics score a patient's consciousness from 3 to 15 on a coma scale named after which Scottish city?

Glasgow gave the scale its name because two doctors at the city's university devised it, publishing it in 1974. It adds up three tests: eye, verbal and movement responses.

In the FAST test that paramedics use to spot a stroke, F is for face and A for arm: what is S?

Speech that is slurred or hard to follow is the third warning sign, and T is the time to call for help. The test was devised in Britain in 1998 to train ambulance staff.

On the triage tags used at major incidents, which colour marks a victim who needs immediate life-saving treatment?

Red tags go to the victims who cannot wait. Rescuers make one attempt to open the airway of a person who is not breathing, and only if that fails do they move on.

Which hormone do paramedics inject into a muscle to stop a life-threatening allergic reaction to a bee sting or peanuts?

Adrenaline, also known as epinephrine, drives the body's own fight-or-flight response. An auto-injector pen delivers about a third of a milligram in one push.

Which common painkiller do paramedics give suspected heart attack patients because it slows the growth of blood clots?

Aspirin stops platelets, the blood's clotting cells, from working normally. Most heart attacks are caused by a clot, so the tablet is a fitting first treatment.

Entonox, the pain-relieving gas and air that British paramedics offer, mixes oxygen with which other gas?

Nitrous oxide, better known as laughing gas, makes up half the mixture. Patients hold the valve themselves, so anyone who grows too drowsy simply drops it.

The word ambulance comes from the Latin verb ambulare, which has what everyday meaning?

To walk, or to move about, is the root sense. An ambulance was originally a moving hospital that followed an army on campaign, long before it was a vehicle.

When paramedics cannot find a vein, an intraosseous needle delivers fluids and drugs straight into what?

Bone marrow drains into the veins and, unlike a vein, cannot collapse. That makes a bone a dependable way in when an ordinary drip cannot be started quickly.

The Star of Life badge worn by paramedics has which ancient symbol of medicine, a snake around a staff, at its centre?

Rod of Asclepius is the staff of the Greek god of healing, with one snake and no wings. The star's six points stand for six stages of a rescue, from detection to handing the patient over.

Which two-word phrase, promoted by trauma surgeon R Adams Cowley, names the vital period right after a serious injury?

Golden hour was Cowley's label for the time in which fast treatment decides whether a patient lives. He led Maryland's Shock Trauma Center, which now carries his name.

Freedom House, the first US ambulance service staffed by trained paramedics, served the Hill District of which city?

Pittsburgh's police had been carrying patients to hospital in paddy wagons. Freedom House, founded in 1967, drew its crews from the Black neighbourhood it served.

The 1970s TV drama Emergency!, credited with making paramedics famous, followed Squad 51 of which real fire department?

Los Angeles County firefighter Mike Stoker drove Engine 51 on screen under his own name. The vehicles of Station 51 are now kept in the county's fire museum.

Which future US president signed the 1970 Wedworth-Townsend Act, which first let paramedics practise in California?

Ronald Reagan signed it as governor in July 1970, despite opposition from doctors, nurses and attorneys. The pilot film of the TV drama Emergency! took its title from the act.

Which US city's fire department launched the Medic One paramedic service in 1970, later profiled by 60 Minutes?

Seattle began with a single unit staffed by 15 paramedics. The idea came from a cardiologist who asked the fire chief to let firefighters treat cardiac arrest.

Triage, used on battlefields long before it reached paramedics, takes its name from a French verb with what meaning?

To sort, or to pick out, is what the Old French verb trier meant. The practice of ranking the wounded is far older than the use of the word for it.

Which actor played a depressed New York paramedic in Martin Scorsese's 1999 film Bringing Out the Dead?

Nicolas Cage carries the film through two days in his character's life. Paul Schrader wrote the script from a novel by Joe Connelly.

Which action director made the 2022 thriller Ambulance, in which bank robbers hijack a paramedic and her patient?

Michael Bay cast Eiza González as the paramedic taken hostage, opposite Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the adoptive brothers on the run.

Which NBC drama follows the paramedics of Ambulance 61 and the crews of Truck 81 and Rescue Squad 3?

Chicago Fire is set at the fictional Firehouse 51, which is also home to Engine 51. The series follows both the working and the private lives of its crews.

Which slang word do Australians use for a paramedic, built the same way as smoko for a work break?

Ambo is clipped from ambulance, just as arvo comes from afternoon and servo from service station. The word is used for the vehicle as well as for its crew.

Which eight-pointed white cross, linked to the medieval Knights Hospitaller, is the emblem of St John Ambulance?

Maltese cross logos differ from country to country, but every St John organisation keeps the eight points. The cross is named after Malta, the island the knights ruled from 1530 to 1798.

Which three-digit number is the European Union's common emergency number, built into the GSM mobile standard?

112 can be dialled free from most mobile phones, even a locked handset. In some countries the network quietly forwards the call to the local number instead.

The rule of nines helps paramedics estimate how much of the body's surface is affected by which kind of injury?

Burns are sized this way because the area affected decides how much fluid a patient needs. The rule was published in 1951 by a surgeon named Alexander Burns Wallace.

A paramedic who writes epistaxis on a patient report is describing which everyday complaint?

A nosebleed is best treated by pinching the soft part of the nose with the head tilted forward, not back. Leaning forward keeps the blood out of the airway.

International Paramedics Day falls on the 8 July birthday of which surgeon, inventor of horse-drawn flying ambulances?

Dominique Larrey copied the speed of the French horse artillery to rush wounded soldiers off the battlefield. The day in his honour was first held in 2022.

Which Vienna-born doctor, a pioneer of CPR, designed the training course for the Freedom House paramedics?

Peter Safar's 32-week course ran from anatomy to defensive driving. His own daughter had died of an asthma attack after a journey to hospital with no care on the way.

Which doctor, medical director of Freedom House, wrote Emergency Care in the Streets, the first textbook for paramedics?

Nancy Caroline went on to become the first medical director of Israel's Magen David Adom, and she translated her textbook into Hebrew.

Flight for Life, the first civilian hospital-based medical helicopter service in the US, began in 1972 in which city?

Denver's St Anthony Central Hospital began the service with a single Alouette III helicopter.

The first 911 call in the United States was placed in 1968 from Haleyville, a town in which state?

Alabama Telephone Company set out to launch 911 ahead of the giant AT&T. The state's Speaker of the House placed that first call.

In which city did cardiologist Frank Pantridge fit the first portable defibrillator into an ambulance in 1965?

Belfast's first set weighed 70 kg and ran off car batteries. Three years later Pantridge had it down to 3 kg, using a miniature capacitor made for NASA.

A defibrillator shock is known to be ineffective against which heart rhythm, commonly called a flatline?

Asystole means the heart has no electrical activity at all, so there is nothing for a shock to reset. Defibrillators work on chaotic rhythms such as ventricular fibrillation.