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Comment by fsckboy | Hacker News Reader

>Fire crews here in BC are dispatched to severe medical incidents (like heart attacks) and most of the time can even beat ambulance crews to a scene

according to the blog post, the father was talking (said "be careful" about a left hand turn) and apparently ambulatory (collapsed on his way into the hospital), so perhaps it wasn't yet considered a severe medical incident yet.

in the post she was told by her mother that father was in the hospital and she could visit him in the morning. This was at 11:30pm, hours after the arrival at the hospital which was within an hour "after dinner"

seems to me the father's condition was not known to be that severe, and well after the "late" arrival at the hospital he was thought to be in good condition. (tho always possible the hospital staff was not keeping the mother informed)

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At least in my area, King County area, a call of severe chest pain would immediately get units rolling code (lights+sirens) for CHEST PAIN. Pulse point, which works in our area, would also start paging BLS certified people in the neighborhood who have the app.

When I've called 911, the dispatchers grilled me going right down the list of signs and symptoms and did an excellent triage job.

I'm a volunteer EMT / FF at a pretty rural station, and the thing that slows us down the most is traffic if we're coming from behind the accident, and distance. As the sibling / gp said, the dispatchers know where we are via gps at almost all times and usually tell the RP (Reporting Party) when we're close so someone can go out and flag us down.

I don't mean to be argumentative, just provide what I know working as a volly FF/EMT for a year. As others have said, this is tragic.

FWIW, Seattle is famously one of the top cities in which to have a serious medical emergency. Very fast response and state-of-the-art care.

what other cities are good?

Boston. Was looking into becoming a medic when living there many years ago, and learned that Boston EMS has their own dedicated training and certification, with more limited protocols for EMTs since there are so many world-class hospitals within a few minutes drive from any point in the city. EMS has less to do but load-and-go.

So I don't know exactly how Toronto operates their ambulance service, but unless the family gave some bad details, the calltaker should have gleaned that they were likely dealing with a case of cardiac-related chest pain, and that's right at the top of the list of severe emergencies, regardless of how far along it has progressed, at least over here anyways.

I should add I feel a little queasy about dissecting this blog post for details. It seems more like a cathartic exercise for the author rather than some breakdown review of how the incident went, so it seems like some details were left out on purpose.

you dissected the blog post to ascertain how bad you thought traffic would be at that hour. that's actually what made me notice the timeline she had established and the appearance that it seemed to get more severe later.

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