There’s a little health tech expo here in DC today to go along with the healthymagination press event, and we saw this VersaMed portable respirator unit.
It’s battery powered and is meant to be used in not only mobile small emergencies (ambulances, etc. ) but they are sold in bulk for larger scale emergencies (Katrina 9/11 etc.) and they are meant to be very user-friendly, so if you have basic EMT-type training you can operate this with minimal instruction and save lives quickly.
It got me thinking about merit badges for using emergency medical equipment. What if you could get some sort of online (or online + real world ) certification to use a device like this, and FEMA or CDC whomever has your cell # , and then if some sort of big incident/epidemic occurs, you could get ‘drafted’ ? Obviously its a sort of last resort solution in one sense, but in another sense, things like a Swine Flu scare makes everyone freak out (note the hand sanitzier in the above picture – there are bowls of those here, haha) so when there is a healthcare scare or emergency everyone wants to do something about it. Instead of it being entirely about personal health/safety maybe we can take some of that motivation and turn it into education & preparedness – get a merit badge on how to use a VersaMed!
“What if you could get some sort of online (or online + real world ) certification to use a device like this, and FEMA or CDC whomever has your cell # , and then if some sort of big incident/epidemic occurs, you could get ‘drafted’ ?”
a HealthCorps of otherwise ordinary citizens (i.e. non-medical professionals) that precipitates out of solution when the time is ripe: I Love it.
A great idea!…very creative.
Sadly, in our litigious society, people will be concerned about liability or even criminal prosecution, should they try to help out and something goes wrong. If you want to pursue this idea (and you should), you might want to look at the state of Good Samaritan protection laws and whether these can be expanded on a national basis.
Stellar idea.
I worked at a shelter in Baton Rouge during Katrina, and a system like that would have made a huge impact on overall care during the first few weeks. I know for a fact, that a place like Louisiana would have many people interested in becoming certified in something more than CPR.
Great idea! The Citizen Corps may be very interested.