Are You Prepared for Medical Emergencies?
December 29th, 2009What would you do in the event that a member of your family, or a neighbour or workmate, suddenly experiences a medical emergency and has to be rushed to hospital? Are you prepared for the worst?
You may need to provide paramedics and doctors with important health information. This may include details of medication that is being used and medical conditions like Asthma or diabetes. Your document might also include vaccination details, medication that is currently being used and details of recent illnesses and injuries.
We tend to think that the emergency services will be able to help regardless of the information they have available to them. They are likely to have a whole load of questions that need to be answered and you really need to be prepared in order to answer them.
One solution to this problem is to produce an Emergency Document for every member of your family and your household. A similar system might be set up in the workplace. The Emergency Document would provide healthcare professionals with details of medical conditions, allergy information, medicatio that might be taken along with vaccination details and additional relevant information.
The contents of these documents are usually best defined by the person concerned. When writing the document it should be assumed that you are unable to communicate, perhaps due to unconsciousness. It is worth considering what sort of information they would benefit from knowing under these circumstances?
Keep hard copies of your families emergency documents in a safe location. Keep your emergency documents up to date with the latest medical information. Take the relevant emergency documents when you go to the emergency room but make certain that staff take copies and return the originals to you. Your Emergency documents can save you a lot of time repeating the same information over and over again.
It is particularly useful to carry emergency documents when travelling. Think of the document as an addition to your travel insurance policy.It would take only a few short minutes to produce such a document but the information it contains could save your life.
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if you’re an older traveler you would do well to consider senior travel insurance and you may like to consider pre-existing medical condition travel insurance.