Emergency Services Will (Hopefully) Be More Accommodating

ČSH

At the last meeting of the coordination council of the Czech National Haemophilia Programme, of which the Czech Hemophilia Society is a member, there was discussion, among other things, about a certain shift in the relationship between doctors and paramedics serving with the emergency medical service, as well as hospital emergency department staff, towards haemophilia patients. The CSH Council has long been striving for better awareness and education among these healthcare workers, but so far with rather poor results. Now it seems that things are slowly beginning to move. The first sign was the participation of a haematologist at a national conference on emergency medicine and disaster medicine called "Pelhřimov Evening", where Ondřej Zapletal spoke before two hundred participants from the Czech Republic and Slovakia (more in the article "About Haemophilia at the Paramedics Conference"), and the next step is an initiative of the Czech National Haemophilia Programme (ČNHP).

The association's representatives in this institution have long pointed to the unsatisfactory situation and called on the coordination council to take action. This has now been achieved - the ČNHP, with the support of the Czech Society of Haematology uniting haematologists, has developed a document intended for emergency medicine specialists. Initial reactions indicate that emergency services are not opposed to the influx of new information and are - at least in some places - prepared to accept a kind of "training" from haematologists and follow it going forward. The ČNHP has drafted a letter addressed to directors of emergency services and hospitals with emergency departments, explaining the basic principles of intervention for haemophilia patients during bleeding, particularly the necessity of immediately administering the clotting factor. Our members have often encountered responses to their request for administration of a brought-along factor such as "I'm the doctor here - don't tell me what to do."

The association has fulfilled another of its fundamental objectives, and one of the most important at that. There is nothing more it can do in this area - everything else is now solely up to the emergency services and emergency departments. We would be very glad if anyone who has encountered an inadequate approach from paramedics would share their experience.