Urban-Oriented Methods

Abstract

Rural communities are not merely miniaturized versions of cities and suburbs and, thus, require different approaches to emergency care than are relevant to urban areas. Emphasis should be placed first on improving capability to respond to emergencies that threaten life and limb rather than on responding to the much larger number of less serious events, inadequate care of which results in inconvenience only. Most persons who die unnecessarily could be saved with relatively simple techniques, and improvement of basic services and skills is much more important at this time than is development of highly sophisticated training programs and response systems. Emergency room nurses need better training, standard protocols for emergency response, and both nurses and ambulance personnel need frequent critique sessions to make up for the sparsity of real emergencies they see. Program evaluation must be an integral part of any improvement effort.