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PRONTO SOCCORSO
Mary G. Barry, MD
Louisville Medicine Editor
[email protected]
I
t’s what they call the ER here at dell’
Ospedale Sacro Cuore Don Calabria in
Negrar, Italy, one of the many homes of
Italian wine-making. Luckily, we did not
need a service there, but the name struck a
deep chord of recognition. It means Immediate Fast Relief, which is what all patients
would like to have from all doctors and our
allies, always.
EMS services in this part of the world
mean ambulances are centrally dispatched
via that province’s “911” number. Ambulances can be hospital-associated, or run and
staffed by private companies or volunteers,
ranging from basic life support services only
to sophisticated ALS/trauma care via fly
cars, helicopters and the Winter Service in
the Alps (not to mention the famous water
ambulanze of Venice).
Fellowship-trained ER docs are still not
the norm here; most are surgeons and internists. ER nurses are required to have extensive ICU experience. Drs. Riccardo Longhi
and Raffaella Picchi et al reported in the Oct.
2015 Italian Journal of Pediatrics the results
of two national surveys by the Italian Pediatric Society regarding the emergency care of
children. They found that ERs in the north
of Italy had the best 24-hour ER-dedicated
pediatric MD coverage, some as much as
95 percent of the time. As with most things
Italian, the poorer South fared worse, with
as low as 40 percent dedicated ER pediatric
coverage in a few places.
Staring at that Ospedale, I watched visitors smoking outside the ER gates. Old and
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LOUISVILLE MEDICINE
young walked into the hospital slowly but
left more expeditiously, a universal attribute of relatives of the sick. Occasionally
a patient came out to the courtyard below,
some to smoke and return, others just to
take in the air.
I thought about the staff inside, and felt a
great swell of gratitude for the ER doctors
who have taught me so much and saved my
patients’ bacon, many thousands of times
by now. From Dr. Don Thomas at General
Hospital to Dr. Corey Slovis of the Grady
Hospital MEC, the teachers of my youth
astounded me with their ferocious competence, their speed and accuracy, their unrivalled storyt