A slow morning at the EMS station is suddenly interrupted by
station
tones. *BEEP...BEEP....BEEP* "Medic 12 respond 123 Fairy Tale Lane for
the possible drowning..... Medic 12 respond 123 Fairy Tale Lane for the
possible drowning... Time out 1023" In less than a minute the medics
are in the ambulance and responding. Calls in this neighborhood are
always interesting....
In this storybook you will find the fables of Aesop told from the
perspective of paramedics who
respond to the events that transpire in the story. These stories are
told with dialogue that is typical between paramedics responding
to calls for service and
their patients. You will also find an inside look at what goes on
"behind
the scenes" of Emergency Medical Services (EMS). EMS is a job that
varies from day to day. Some days there is barely time to eat, while
other days are filled with nothing other than down time. The calls for
service that are experienced vary as much as the daily schedule. In
these stories, you will experience the daily uncertainty of EMS through
the eyes of the main characters.
Aesop's fables is a collection of over six hundred stories from ancient
Greece. Most
of the stories are very short, but serve to show the reader a moral
lesson. These lessons are usually provided by the failures of one of
the characters within the story.
In the ancient world, Aesop's fables were originally told verbally. The
stories main characters are typically animals. Given the fact that in
several of the stories one of the characters either dies or becomes
injured, makes it the perfect set up to be told through the eyes of
responding paramedics.
Emergency Medical Services is tasked with responding to, caring for,
and transporting patients in the out-of-hospital setting. The
ambulances used are typically staffed with Emergency Medical
Technicians (EMT). There are three levels of training for EMTs:
EMT-Basic, EMT-Intermediate, and EMT-Paramedic. Paramedic is the
highest level of training for pre-hospital providers. There are several
different staffing options that EMS uses to provide care to their
communities. The "typical" combination for larger services is one
EMT-Basic and a Paramedic. Some rural services may use two EMT-Basics,
where other services may use two paramedics.
As I have mentioned, these stories are told through the
interaction of the paramedics and the patients (the injured characters)
and bystanders at the scene. The responding paramedics are human, but
have been assigned to a particular area of town where most of the
population consists of talking animals. This makes for several
interesting calls. The particular medic in which the stories
are told through is
a seasoned paramedic named James. He has several years experience, but
even he was amazed at the unusual nature of the calls in Medic 12's
district. Unfortunately,
his assigned partner is the exact opposite. His partner, Frank, is
fresh out of
training and still has many things to learn! This will make for a few
humorous moments as he learns how to manage these particularly
difficult
patients and situations. The calls covered from here
range from treating severely injured trauma patient to a non-emergent
assault victim. The patients James and Frank encounter include a doe
who is attacked by a lion, a frog, who is run over by a wagon and a
mule who is attacked by thieves. There is also a story within the
story, when James shares previous experiences with Frank during some
down time. Storytelling is a huge part of the culture of EMS.
So buckle in for the ride, as I take you through Aesop's fables from
the perspective of EMS.
