“There are districts of CapeTown that ambulances and single responders would never enter without a police escort”, Daniel Knogler tells us after his first stint in South Africa. 54 The team take a short break at a gas station. Most are open around the clock, offering small bars “serving genuinely good coffee,” as Daniel tells us with more than a little appreciation. Back inVienna, he reallymisses the nightly pickme-up. Recalling one particular coffee break, he continues: “We’d just got the first sip of cappuccino in when a call came in. Two “red patients” with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Daniel and his Austrian colleague, who had studied medicine in Graz and accompanied him to South Africa, were the first to arrive on the scene along with the ECP. Having provided first aid, assessed the situation, administered medication and inserted a chest tube, the ambulance arrives. A bench that normally seats the ECPs inside the vehicle is converted into a fully functional stretcher. Transporting two patients in a highly critical condition in an ambulance and showing up unannounced in a shock room with them is completely normal in Cape Town. “Unimaginable back home,” Daniel comments, visibly impressed. He points out another significant difference: instead of using the NACA score, a system for assessing the severity of an injury or illness that is widely used in Europe, patients in the South African metropolis are color-coded. Red: acute threat to life Orange: possible threat to life Yellow: inpatient treatment. Green: mild injury or illness Blue: deceased. MANHOLES ANDTHE SKILLS LAB All these things are taught in the Department of Emergency Medicine of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, the main training institution for emergency doctors at the Cape. On campus, there are deep manholes for rope rescue training, large pools for practicing water rescue, and a special Skills Lab that can realistically simulate any kind of scenario. Not only are ECPs taught about pre-clinical medicine, i.e., first-response care on the site of an accident, they also learn to handle emergencies at hospitals. The Department’s graduates are highly qualified medical practitioners whose training has prepared them for virtually any scenario. It is a level of education “that many European countries would be well advised
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTA1ODY=