Special medical ambulances are used to urgently transport patients or provide them with emergency care at home. Vehicles of this category, when leaving for a call, have the right of way on the road; they can drive through a prohibiting traffic light or move in the oncoming lane, making sure to turn on special sound and signal beacons.
Linear category
This is the most common variation of emergency vehicles. In our country, line crews are most often provided with modifications of ambulance carriages based on Gazelle, Sobol with a low roof, UAZ and VAZ-2131 SP (targeted in rural areas).
In accordance with international standards, these vehicles, due to insufficient interior dimensions, can only be used for transporting people who do not require immediate medical attention. According to European requirements, transport for basic treatment, monitoring and transportation of patients requiring emergency intervention must have an enlarged working part.
Reanimation vehicles
According to GOST, ambulances for resuscitation, cardiology, toxicology teams and intensive care doctors must comply with a certain category. As a rule, this is a high-roof vehicle equipped with equipment for carrying out intensive activities, monitoring the condition and transporting the patient. In addition to the standard set of medications and special devices for linear analogues, they must have a pulse oximeter, perfusers and some other equipment, which we will discuss in more detail below.
In fact, the purpose of the team is determined not so much by the equipment of the intensive care unit, but by the qualifications of the personnel and the disease profile for which it is used. There are special analogues of resuscitation machines for children, which is very rare in our country. As far as we know, even in Moscow there is only one such team - in the Filatov Children's City Clinical Hospital.
Neonatal model for newborns
The main difference between this type of ambulance is the presence of a special compartment for a newborn patient (incubator-type incubator). It is a rather complex device in the form of a box with opening walls made of transparent plastic. It maintains optimal stable temperature and humidity levels. The doctor can monitor the baby’s condition and the functioning of vital organs. If necessary, he connects an artificial respiration apparatus, oxygen and other devices that ensure the survival of the little patient. This is especially important for premature babies.
Neonatology ambulances are assigned to special centers for caring for newborns. For example, in Moscow this is City Clinical Hospital No. 13, 7, 8, in St. Petersburg - a specialized advisory center.
Other modifications
Among other medical transport options, the following options can be noted:
Ambulance vehicle classes
Depending on the dimensions, equipment and technical parameters, there are three categories of ambulances:
Below is a table showing the drugs and equipment available on board ambulances, depending on their category.
| Ambulance brigade staffing | Class "A" | Class "B" | Class "C" |
| Infusion set NISP-05 | |||
| Trauma kit NIT-01 | |||
| Obstetric set NISP-06 and resuscitation NISP | |||
| Paramedic assistance kit NISP-08 | |||
| Cloak stretcher NP | |||
| Gurney and longitudinal folding stretcher | |||
| Defibrillator | |||
| Ventilator TM-T | |||
| Device for inhalation anesthesia | |||
| Pulse oximeter | |||
| Nebulizer, glucometer, peak flow meter | |||
| Sets of splints for fixing the hip, neck | |||
| Reduced type cylinder for medical gases | |||
| Injection stand |
In history and the modern era, there are cases when unconventional vehicles, sometimes very original, were used as rapid medical response carriages. For example, during the Second World War in large cities, trams often acted as ambulances. This was due to the fact that almost all road transport, not to mention specialized medical vehicles, was mobilized to the front lines.
Along the demarcation line, also during the Second World War, ambulance trains ran, which can be classified as emergency aid very conditionally. They were entrusted with the responsibility for the emergency delivery of the wounded and sick from the front-line zone to hospitals.
In remote territories of modern Russia (in the taiga regions of Siberia and the Far East), snowmobiles or all-terrain vehicles serve as emergency vehicles. The peoples of Chukotka and other regions of the Far North often use reindeer harnesses to deliver the sick. In some regions, both now and in the past, the fastest way to get to a hospital is by water. They use “floating” hospitals (boats with motors, cutters, motor ships).
In conclusion
In most domestic cities, the most popular ambulance vehicle is the GAZ-32214 or 221172. It is these vehicles that most often respond to standard calls, have minimal equipment, and at the same time save many lives.
I would like to hope that this industry will develop, especially since it has been financed for several years now through proceeds from compulsory health insurance.
We often see them on city streets. Disaster medicine vehicles or simply ambulances. Few people have seen them from the inside, usually the doctors and patients themselves. But a patient in an intensive care unit usually doesn’t care about the interiors and equipment if he were alive, and doctors are also reluctant to show pictures of the inside. But it's interesting.
So let's go inside as a reader. Better to look now than later.
Here is a car for resuscitation teams. Next is the equipment. 
Lots of light, lots of space. If desired, the car can serve two victims on the road at once.
Patients enter the car from the back doors, so let's go from the side ones. 
The left side of the ambulance is completely occupied by medical equipment, equipment and medicines. 
All free space is used, for example, there are neck straps on the handrail, and an electric blanket hangs on the right. 
A resuscitation monitor connects to the patient and displays information, pulse, heartbeat, temperature and several other parameters. Did you see it in the movies? The cap is placed on the finger and the patient is under control. 
The artificial lung ventilation device is like an on-board one, but it can also be used autonomously; there are cases when it is necessary to perform mechanical ventilation on a person locked in a car.
And at the bottom right you can see a syringe dispenser. Not all medications can be administered in a stream and quickly or by drip.
Here a syringe is inserted and the medicine enters the body at a certain speed. Doctors are busy with the patient at this time. 
Defibrillator monitor. Well, everyone has definitely seen him in the movies. Using a defibrillator, you can also take a cardiogram. 
Anesthesia-respiratory apparatus. It's also portable. 
Doctors call this device a “one-room apartment” - it costs the same.
Ventilator LTV-1200. Can work completely autonomously, does not depend on a compressed oxygen cylinder, like the ventilator above.
The LTV-1200 produces breathing air immediately. 
There is one more interesting thing, a pain stress detector that is still rare in Russia.
The device can determine whether a person is in pain, even if he is under anesthesia, or unconscious. You can connect it and see if the anesthesia can be strengthened.
Exhaled air gas analyzer. Almost a chemical laboratory. You can determine what a person was poisoned with and what help to provide.
Intraosseous access system. It is not always possible to give an injection into a vein. Veins can hide under low pressure, and the patient can also be pinched somewhere.
To do this, you can quickly and reliably inject medications directly into the bone. 
Red resuscitation case, there's a lot of stuff in there. 
Everything for injections, everything is at hand. 
There is also an obstetric kit, the guys can freely deliver babies. There are toxicology kits, in case of poisoning, rinse the stomach and so on.
Surgical instruments. Quickly sew, cut, mend. Sets for tracheostomy and pleural puncture 
Well, and besides, tires, blankets, cylinders with oxygen, nitrogen and other things, a couple of shelves with medicines, several suitcases of what was not shown. In general, there is a lot of things, but I don’t advise you to use it all! Take care of yourself!
The color scheme of ambulances - white with red - was first established by GOST of the USSR in 1962.
Since 1968, according to GOST, an orange flashing light has been installed on ambulances. Unlike the blue beacon (the modern “flashing light”), it did not provide advantages over other road users.
The fastest ambulance in Soviet history and among production cars was the Volga GAZ 24-03, whose maximum speed was 142 km/h, which is 2 km/h more than the ZIL-118M Yunost special bus with a V8 engine.
In the 1970s, RAF-22031 minibuses were the first to receive a blue flashing light on the roof. Due to confusion with GOST standards, similar UAZs (“tablets”) were produced for more than 10 years with an orange beacon.
The fashion of putting inscriptions on the fronts of emergency vehicles in a mirror image came from the West. The driver of the car ahead could read the inscription in the mirrors in normal form and give way.
According to reviews from veteran ambulance drivers, the most reliable medical vehicles were modifications of the Volga GAZ-22. Traveling a million kilometers in 8-10 years was commonplace for them.
An ambulance siren differs in tone from both a police siren and a fire siren. Cars such as ZIM, Pobeda and Volga GAZ-22 were not equipped with sirens.
A single telephone number for calling emergency medical services “03” was introduced throughout the USSR in 1965, simultaneously with emergency numbers for the police and fire department.
What happens when you dial "03" on your phone? Your call automatically goes to the central dispatch center of the city or regional center. A paramedic answers the phone to receive and transmit calls. In front of him is a monitor, where the algorithm is displayed, according to which he asks questions. Everything you say is entered into the computer by the paramedic. The data is processed and, depending on your location, the call is routed to a regional paramedic. The region has several substations at its disposal - the call goes to the one closest to the victim. The whole process takes about three minutes.
Not so long ago, ambulances responded to all calls without exception.
If a person dials “03,” it means he is already sick,” says Irina, a Moscow ambulance paramedic with thirty years of experience. - No one will just call, right? We used to have doctors from all over the world come to us to see how our system worked. Our system was like an exhibition of national economic achievements.
Since January 2013, a radical reconstruction began at the “exhibition of achievements”.
Technical re-equipment: two sticks, and a tarpaulin stretched between them
But we need to start one step earlier. At the beginning of 2013, Moscow Deputy Mayor Leonid Pechatnikov said that in two years the mortality rate in Moscow had decreased by almost 18%. It's practically a miracle. High mortality is the pain and shame of our country. It seemed that such things changed slowly along with the general social and economic situation - but here there was a tremendous decline in a short time. Now, according to this indicator, the capital is at the level of many European countries and 36% better than the rest of Russia.
This achievement was discussed at many seminars - including us trying to understand how this is possible. It turned out that, most likely, the reason is not only an improvement in the general level of health, but also in very specific and seemingly simple things: ambulances received equipment and medications that allow them to quickly begin therapy - primarily for cardiovascular diseases, which contribute the greatest contribution to mortality. The second simple thing: ambulances must bring an acute patient to exactly the clinic where he can quickly receive help - and here it is important to rationally manage the system of clinics (hence the idea of consolidating them and increasing the level of staff and equipment). That is, the mortality situation is affected by the refurbishment and change in the organization of hospital emergency rooms.
In our country, this is still called the emergency room,” says Alexander, a resuscitator from Chelyabinsk. -Have you seen, at least in TV series, how American clinics work? There is no peace there, everyone is running around! Several specialists begin working with the patient at once, the time from arrival to the start of therapy is minimal.
Let’s face it, not all is well in the capital. There are cases when a person, for example, after a stroke, is quickly taken to the hospital by ambulance, but it is Saturday, and there is no doctor on site who could make the right decision within three hours, when effective therapy is still possible. Nevertheless, ambulances in Moscow are well equipped, and this probably proves that it is possible to sharply reduce mortality in the country. If it worked in Moscow, why not everywhere?
We have everything in the carriages,” says Irina from the Moscow ambulance. - They are fully equipped. Breathing apparatus - two each. There are absolutely enough medications. If a qualified medical worker arrives, he will have everything to provide assistance to the required extent. But in the regions the situation is far from so pleasant.
There are about sixty cars with one hundred percent wear and tear,” complains Tamara, an emergency doctor from Ufa, “forty cars are more or less normal.” Well, God bless him. The wheels are spinning - people are moving. However, the Chamber of Control and Accounts found that our equipment is obsolete. Cardiology and intensive care are well equipped, but in ordinary machines the equipment is old - you have to work with rare devices for ventilation.
Apparently, the modernization of medicine has not reached some regions.
I don’t know what kind of reform you have, but I’m even ashamed to pull out our stretchers in front of the sick. Two sticks, and a tarpaulin stretched between them,” says Dmitry, a district ambulance paramedic from the Vladimir region. “We don’t have a Gazelle car yet, I replenished it myself with more or less everything I needed, but once I was put in a UAZ on someone else’s shift, it was so scary.” While I was “rocking” the patient, the lights went out, the battery died - we had to take the person to the hospital, but the car wouldn’t start. The driver and I start the car from the pusher, and the patient dies. Cars for severe patients are not equipped at all. We make diagnoses using a cardiogram, but it is so difficult to discern a microinfarction. To diagnose a microinfarction, for example, there is a troponin test, which shows an accurate result in twenty minutes, but we don’t have it. There are no defibrillators, not even an Ambu bag for artificial ventilation of the lungs.
In such a situation, you do not need to be a Nobel laureate in economics and an outstanding manager to significantly reduce mortality. Increasing funding for refurbishment and re-equipment would have had an effect in any case - as, apparently, it had an effect in Moscow. Of course, it would be nice to have ways to properly manage finances; an official is not always able and motivated to distribute money wisely. But medical spending definitely reduces mortality. The problem is that the reform is taking place against the backdrop of a general reduction in allocations for medicine; by 2015 they will be reduced by 17.8%, so reformers are hoping for “increased efficiency” and not for additional funding.
Three magic letters of compulsory medical insurance: everyone was laid off
The revolution-reform consists, first of all, in the fact that the state has stopped direct funding of the ambulance service from the budget. The ambulance was included in the basic compulsory health insurance program.
What difference has this made for doctors and patients? Today in Russia there is a single-channel financing of medicine - all the money allocated by the state for these purposes goes to the compulsory medical insurance fund. This fund acts as the buyer of medical care that is provided to citizens free of charge.
Compulsory medical insurance is a huge organization, but it is unlikely that it is capable of fully servicing such a structure as an ambulance, says Irina from the Moscow ambulance. - It was very expensive for the state, but we had many specialized teams - cardiologists, toxicologists, traumatologists. This system has been created for years. Now they have all been laid off.
After inclusion in the compulsory medical insurance system, payment for the work of ambulance employees began to be made on the basis of invoices submitted for payment to the insurance company. The unit of measurement was a citizen's call to an ambulance, for which there is a fixed cost. The call is paid from the compulsory medical insurance fund. Invoices are reviewed for consistency with the volume, quality and cost of assistance provided. Based on the results of the inspection, the money is transferred to the doctors. The new financing rules should not have affected patients. Even if the person who called the ambulance for some reason cannot present a compulsory medical insurance policy, doctors have no right to refuse to help him.
It was assumed that the quality of service provision would even improve, because the assessment of the work of doctors was now taken over by insurance companies, which theoretically could refuse to pay for an ambulance call if the patient contacted them with a complaint. But in reality, additional money - with or without the compulsory medical insurance system - is nowhere to be found, but doctors are caught up in a complex system of monetary motivations. Moreover, these motivations require new formalities, not improved work.
Paperwork: a mistake in the number - and the call will not be paid
When the ambulance was included in the compulsory medical insurance system, it was assumed that the regions would bear the costs of medical care for patients not included in this system. But regional budgets, as we know, are not flexible. Therefore, this rule does not work in most cases.
If the patient did not find the insurance policy when calling, this means the call will not be paid, says Tula ambulance doctor Yulia. - Our salary depends on the number of calls. No policy - no call.
Returning to the base, doctors fill out patient records - this is now fundamentally important for their salary. An error in the letter of the last name or in the number of the compulsory medical insurance policy - and the call will also not be paid. It’s a familiar picture: near the senior doctor’s office, someone always writes down the quantity and name of medications; there’s not enough time for everything on site.
We have a lot of medical documentation,” says the resuscitator at the Tula ambulance substation, “and it takes a huge amount of time. The nonsense of the situation is that we can bring in a patient in agony - and they tell us: “Where are the accompanying documents? How did you transport him without documents?” And we all the way - one was pumping, the other was breathing!
It is normal that doctors are regularly underpaid due to errors in paperwork. The management explains this by negligence in filling out the cards - they say that doctors will not get used to the scrupulousness of the insurance system, and the insurance company finds fault with every little thing so as not to pay.
Increased workload: you can’t survive without a part-time job
Three years ago, reform ideologists promised that doctors’ salaries would increase by 60–70% and that they would not have to take part-time jobs, which would have a negative impact on the quality of medical services. In fact, the basic salaries of doctors and emergency paramedics in the regions are still humiliatingly low, and they still cannot survive without a part-time job.
The standard is every three days, says Tula ambulance doctor Yulia, but many go out every other day, or even for two days in a row.
Everything is combined now: in the ambulance and in the control room, in the state ambulance and in the private one, in the ambulance and in hospitals. For example, a surgeon operates in a hospital five days a week, works two or three nights during the week in an ambulance, and takes another day off on weekends. Someone selects patients here for private practice.
And young doctors don’t leave here at all,” she continues, “to earn money. They gain experience and leave for Moscow. There, the ambulance pays three times more, but the work is the same. It’s hard, of course, to travel there: three hours on the road, a day in an ambulance and another three hours home. The doctors there are not only from Tula - from Ryazan, Kaluga, Vladimir, Tver.
Mikhail is just one of those young doctors who go to work in Moscow. Only he has already run over. I got up at five, got behind the wheel, and was at work at nine. And so on for four years. Tired of it.
“I’m the wrong doctor,” he says. - I am a psychiatrist-narcologist, retrained as a resuscitator. My mother is a narcologist, she tried to dissuade me, but I went anyway.
So why?
Vocation.
Paramedic Lena from Tula says that she went to work today for two days, and will work the next shift in a paid ambulance.
I used to work in a hospital, this is even harder. Here you can at least lie down and eat, but there you are at the post for the entire shift, and I have 23 children - everyone needs to be given a pill at the right time, check that everyone has eaten. In a paid ambulance I receive calls, where I can even answer calls while lying down. I also combine it with the function of deputy director and, when necessary, I go out on calls.
How long have you been working in this mode?
Since 2005.
What if you only keep one job?
I am raising my daughter myself, and I also help my parents. If I left only one job, it would be 15 thousand. You can hardly live on 15 thousand. And so I will work until my daughter graduates from college. As long as I have enough strength.
Division of emergency and emergency care: double work
As a result of the reform, calls from citizens on “03” are divided into ambulance and emergency. An ambulance responds to acute conditions when the patient needs urgent hospitalization and the minutes count - this includes acute abdominal pain, heart attack, injuries, accidents. About twenty minutes should pass from the moment of the call to the arrival of the ambulance. Emergency care is different in that there is only one doctor working here and he mainly goes to so-called home calls - for example, hypertension, chronic diseases. The average time it takes for an ambulance to reach a patient is two hours.
What are the disadvantages? If the patient’s condition turns out to be more severe than expected, then you have to call an ambulance again and wait again, because the ambulance does not have the right to hospitalize. In addition, for doctors it is double work.
Now the system is designed in such a way that the ambulance stops working at 20.00,” says Svetlana, a nurse from the cardiology ambulance team in the city of Ufa, “and the entire load falls on the ambulance. There are patients who, in principle, should call an ambulance, but they specifically wait until the evening so that the call automatically falls on us - because we have more qualified doctors.
The separation system is, in theory, needed in order to relieve ambulance workers of extra workload, social challenges, and challenges without risking their lives. It is reasonable. But in practice, experienced patients already know what to say in order for an ambulance to arrive: to “mistake” the age downwards, to hide the chronic nature of the disease, to aggravate the symptoms. The word that works best is “dying.”
Reduction of specialized teams: keeping up with calls is unrealistic
Before the reform, the ambulance system had cardiology, toxicology, traumatology and neurology teams. For example, in Moscow there were five specialized toxicology teams in special vehicles equipped with a chemical laboratory. Now there is only one such brigade, and it has been converted into a general brigade, which is obliged to respond to all calls. Here everything seems to come down to the compulsory medical insurance system, because the savings for the state are obvious. The cost of calling a specialized toxicology team according to the tariff agreement between doctors and insurers is 8 thousand rubles, and calling a regular team is only 3 thousand.
But how do these savings affect critically ill patients?
If earlier, for example, a call was received with an acute cerebrovascular accident, the neurological team had a Doppler, and the neurologist could immediately determine the source of the hemorrhage,” explains Moscow paramedic Irina. - Now the equipment remains, but the specialists who previously worked in these teams have become simple line doctors.
What is most alarming is the trend toward reductions in cardiology teams.
We have six large substations and two small ones in Ufa,” says doctor Tamara, “and if earlier there were two cardiac teams at each substation, now there is one machine at four substations. In order to increase efficiency, specialized teams have to respond to calls from other substations - on average, three calls per night. If we had only gone out on our specialized calls, I think we would have managed it. But, for example, we recently went to a call for a child who had swallowed silicone balls, only because there were no other cars. The nearest children's hospital did not have a doctor who performed fibrogastroscopy, and we had to take the child to another hospital. As cardiologists, we dropped out of the process for an hour and a half. Moreover: in the future, cardiology teams are going to be reduced altogether, while coronary disease is recognized throughout the world as the disease that ranks first in mortality.
In Tula, the ambulance was subordinated to the city hospital. Here, too, the cardiology and resuscitation teams were turned into universal cardiac resuscitation teams.
Is that better?
“Yeah,” paramedic Alexey covers his mouth with his hand so as not to say too much.
Optimization?
Has long been.
As a result of optimization, there was only one children's team left for the entire substation in Tula. Now she is sent only to the youngest children, up to one year old. And at the same time, now the children's team, headed by an elderly experienced doctor, is on call for six hours straight.
Over the past six months, two teams out of four have been cut,” says Dmitry, a district ambulance paramedic from the Vladimir region. - We serve our village and 88 villages. When I take a patient to Vladimir, it’s 70 kilometers there and back, I’m gone for two hours. And if the second brigade also leaves, the call goes to the substation in Petushki - if there is a free car, they go from there. On average, this is thirty to forty minutes, but there are states when seconds count. If they returned four cars to us and equipped them more or less decently, I think we could cope. Otherwise, most likely, we will simply be closed soon and the substation will be transferred to Petushki. It will be unrealistic to drive from there and be on time for calls when the journey takes forty minutes.
Reducing the composition of teams: paramedics will take the place of doctors
Just a couple of years ago, a doctor was always present in the ambulance team and people were provided with qualified medical care at the pre-hospital stage.
Now, due to low salaries and high workload, doctors are not very willing to take this job.
There are only a few medical teams left; we have mostly paramedics,” says doctor Tamara from Ufa. - With our salaries, doctors don’t come to us. If a doctor works at a headquarters and sits in a clinic, he does not run around the floors and does not listen to rudeness, but in our country every fifth patient considers it his duty to point out how bad we are.
The reality is that the replacement of doctors with paramedics is happening in all regions, and, according to doctors, everything is heading towards the fact that doctors will be excluded from this level altogether.
How might this affect patients?
Now in almost all major cities of Russia there are well-equipped cardiological and neurosurgical centers where they can save a patient from a heart attack, stroke or the consequences of injury if ambulance staff make the correct diagnosis and transport the patient on time. In particular, due to the timely delivery of patients to such specialized centers, it was possible to reduce the mortality rate from heart attacks and strokes in Moscow to the level of Eastern Europe. But this is in the capital, where the salaries of doctors are sometimes three times higher than the salaries of their colleagues in the regions and the number of doctors is higher, also due to the influx of personnel from the regions.
Will it be possible to achieve a reduction in mortality from heart attacks and strokes in Russia as a whole when, in addition to the reduction of specialized teams, the place of doctors will be taken by paramedics? After all, a paramedic is not a doctor, he can incorrectly assess the situation and take the patient to a regular hospital instead of a specialized center - and then the outcome will be completely different. Moreover, the system is designed in such a way that when a paramedic takes up work, he is obliged to go to a call of any complexity, regardless of experience and length of service. At the same time, there are manipulations that only a doctor has the right to perform. For example, when the patient does not have peripheral vessels and the drug needs to be injected under the collarbone.
According to doctors interviewed by RR, the problem would not have been so acute if the system of training and advanced training of medical personnel had been streamlined.
“I believe that a good doctor and a good paramedic are equivalent,” says Irina from the Moscow ambulance. - Some paramedics know more than a doctor and make a better diagnosis. It all depends on the person - if he wants, he will ask, be interested and learn quickly. Unfortunately, now most people come who are not interested in advanced training. Here, for example, is a challenge: a patient has abdominal pain, and this is an abdominal form of heart attack. If a paramedic comes to such a call and doesn’t give a damn, he may simply not figure it out or collect the wrong anamnesis. Naturally, they call and consult, but it’s one thing when a specialist sees a patient, and another thing when the consultation is in absentia. Previously, we had a school for young specialists, now we also have one, but the administration has no time to deal with this. When I was a senior paramedic, the head and I gathered young people, told them about the structure of the ambulance, checked how they wrote out prescriptions, tested their knowledge of equipment - these were a kind of mini-exams. Nobody does this now. I judge by my substation. And, I must say, there is no particular desire to learn from young people. You can put a young paramedic with an adult and train them, but they don’t pay extra for this and few people are ready for this.
The trend of reducing the number of teams to one (!) physician also looks quite alarming.
Our team consists of a driver and a paramedic,” says paramedic Dmitry. - We have no choice, the paramedic here is responsible for everything. I am 21 years old, my replacement is 24.
Today, as part of the ambulance team, one medic is in the order of things. But if a situation arises when a patient needs resuscitation, two hands are not enough to carry out the necessary actions.
Recently, a Muscovite was riding an ATV and crashed into a tractor,” continues Dmitry. - Brain contusion, traumatic coma. I put him on a stretcher - he goes into cardiac arrest. At this moment, two doctors are needed. One begins cardiac massage, the second begins artificial ventilation. Even if I had an Ambu bag for artificial ventilation, it is physically simply impossible to carry out full resuscitation alone. That patient eventually died.
Consequences of the consolidation of hospitals: the ambulance plugs all the holes
The general reduction in hospitals, which has been occurring in Russia for several years now, is explained by the fact that many hospitals, in addition to medical care, also perform social functions - for example, a nursing function. Now intensive care beds, which are paid for from compulsory medical insurance, are exempt from these social functions. In addition, in order to improve the quality of services, treatment centers should become not district, but regional hospitals. In place of closed hospitals in rural areas, there should be paramedic stations, general practitioners' offices and, at best, a few day hospital beds.
“I am against the fact that small hospitals are closing,” says Tula emergency room doctor Yulia. - Of course, in a large center the equipment and doctors are better. But grandma won’t go on her own even a few kilometers away. So everything falls on the ambulance. How many chronically ill people are called to us now! They say that if they call the local doctor, he will not help. And you will give an injection and talk. We do not have psychological assistance to the population - we provide that too. Now even cardiac teams, as usual, go not only to arrhythmias, but also to purely outpatient calls. It turns out that holes have been made in healthcare, and the ambulance service is now plugging them. We are both for the clinic and for the hospital. Because at the clinic, patients will first be covered with a three-story mat. If an ECG is needed, they will record it in a month. And we arrived and they did a cardiogram and measured our sugar.
Formalism instead of humanity: a step to the right - explanatory
“Once I came to a call, a woman complained of shortness of breath,” says Dmitry, a district ambulance paramedic from the Vladimir region. - I did a cardiogram, and she had an extensive myocardial infarction with pulmonary edema. I'm taking her to intensive care. It was clear that the patient was in serious condition. The resuscitator comes out, asks what the pressure is, and says: “The pressure is okay - take it to Vladimir.” I say: “She will die in the car.” “No, take it.” I took her to Vladimir, the doctor comes out and says: “Are you a fool? To take on such responsibility, just ten more minutes, and it would have died.” For a heart attack, 7, 14 and 21 days are indicative. The woman I brought to Vladimir was alive, she was transferred from intensive care to a regular ward, she began to recover, but died on the 21st day - because a complication developed. If we had gotten her to the hospital on time, perhaps the heart attack could have been prevented, but since we were riding, this is the outcome. Recently I brought a patient with asthma and the doctor came out: “Take me to Petushki.” I have already learned, I say: “Only in your accompaniment.” I put the patient to bed, the doctor heard that he was again complaining of shortness of breath. “No,” he says, “then we won’t go.” I unloaded the patient back and spent a total of three hours on the call. Doctors are afraid to take responsibility and put it on us.
Financial incentives that are introduced through compulsory medical insurance often work well - it is profitable for the doctor and the hospital to “provide a medical service,” especially a simple one. But in cases of responsibility and risk, small salaries, for which you still have to fight with reporting, kill the most important thing in doctors that should be - the desire to save lives.
Paramedic Irina from the Moscow ambulance says that in the old days, for doctors, the human factor came first. The doctor himself chose how much time he would spend on the patient. Now, according to new standards, an ambulance must reach a patient in twenty minutes. Thirty minutes are allotted to provide assistance on call. During this time, the doctor must write down the patient’s data, collect anamnesis, listen, look, do a cardiogram, and measure sugar.
Of course, we stay on call as long as necessary,” says Irina. “But if you’re fiddling around for more than half an hour, you have to call back and let them know what you’re doing.” Let’s take a situation: you come to a call and work alone, take care of a patient, give an intravenous injection. The medicine is administered slowly, and they start calling you: “What are you doing there?” This control is distracting. You have to think not about the patient, but about not forgetting to call back. There are a lot of limits, and doctors are under such tension all day long. Stepped away from the algorithm, a step to the right - explanatory. Constant struggle for indicators, always thinking about how to meet the deadline. If a person has enough moral and spiritual reserves, then, of course, he will be able to do his job even in such a situation and will try to do it efficiently, without harm to patients. But the conditions are really quite difficult, many doctors are now embittered, they say: “How can we take care of the sick if no one takes care of us?”
We are no longer paid for repeated calls, and here everyone decides for themselves,” continues Irina. - And in any area there are patients who, for some reason, call an ambulance more often than others and repeatedly. In our area, for example, there are only two of these, and we know them by their last names - Zayats and Zaleschanskaya, both, by the way, former doctors. They lived to be ninety years old, and had neither friends nor relatives left. They call an ambulance just so someone can come talk to them. Sometimes you come to such a grandmother, and she says: “This is only the second time I’ve called.” “Really? - I answer. “Tatyana Leonidovna, I’m here for the fourth time in 24 hours.” So what? I'll go and talk. It won't decrease. People go into medicine out of great love for people and their neighbors. And if this is not the case, it is better to immediately choose another profession.
What do medical unions want?
On November 30, a march of doctors against health care reform, organized by trade unions, will take place in Moscow.
Trade unions consider it a mistake to introduce single-channel financing and the principle of self-financing in the work of state and municipal medical institutions. After all, now the wages of doctors have ceased to be a protected item in the structure of healthcare costs. And regional authorities are seeking to reduce their participation in the financing of territorial compulsory medical insurance programs and approve deliberately reduced volumes of work for medical institutions. For example, according to the Action trade union, the tariff for services at the Ufa ambulance station for 2014 was underestimated by 5%, which led to a decrease in funding by 70.2 million rubles. As a result, the salaries of ordinary employees fell by about 20% in June.
In this regard, trade union leaders propose to abandon insurance medicine for state and municipal institutions and return to the budget model of organizing healthcare, which will allow strict control of costs and limit the arbitrariness of employers in the distribution of wages. In addition, it is proposed to deprive insurance companies of the function of monitoring the work of medical institutions, since in reality they control not the quality of medical services, but the correctness of documentation. As a result, healthcare workers spend time not treating patients, but on increasingly careful compliance with paper formalities.
On December 19, Novosibirsk and the regions of the NSO officially received the keys to the new ambulances - doctors showed how the cars are built from the inside.
18 new emergency medical vehicles - 9 GAZelles and 9 UAZs - arrived in Novosibirsk at the end of the week, and at the beginning of this week the cars dispersed to their areas. The Novosibirsk ambulance station will receive 7 GAZelles. The remaining cars will go to Bagansky, Barabinsky, Kolyvansky, Kochkovsky, Krasnozersky, Kyshtovsky, Chanovsky, Chulymsky, Tatarsky, Toguchinsky districts, as well as to Koltsovo.
“This is a special federal program to update ambulances... I think this is just in time - today we see how the load on the efficiency of ambulance work is increasing every day. More calls for influenza, ARVI, such an epidemic is still coming. I congratulate the doctors and hope that they will respond with care and efficiency towards the people who dial 03 with hope - they will come and provide assistance,” NSO Governor Vladimir Gorodetsky explained to reporters after the ceremonial presentation of car keys to doctors in the region’s districts.
Earlier, the ministry said that in 2016, about 21.5 million rubles were allocated from the regional budget for the purchase of new cars. - They want to spend the same amount on new ambulances next year. In total, there are now about 330 ambulances in Novosibirsk and NSO.
Journalists asked NSO Minister of Health Oleg Ivaninsky how the combination of Novosibirsk roads with their features correlates with the domestic automobile industry.
“It correlates very well. It is clear that any machine requires maintenance; a domestic machine can be repaired much better and cheaper today. Mercedes and Volkswagen, of course, break down less, but life is life. We live in quite an extreme climate - yesterday it was warm, today it’s already -20, this is always extreme for a car.
But what was in the UAZ 20 years ago and today is generally heaven and earth. Try to stand up to your full height in the old UAZ and work on resuscitation measures here too,” noted Oleg Ivaninsky.
At the request of NGS.NOVOSTI, the ambulance doctors spoke in detail about the arrangement of the new cars.
Deputy Chief Physician of the Novosibirsk Ambulance Station Alexander Balabushevich emphasized that all the imported cars belong to class B. “This means that it can be used not only for transporting patients, but also for performing medical evacuation and providing medical assistance during the journey,” - he explained.
Alexander Balabushevich
Showing the UAZ, the deputy chief physician noted that thanks to all-wheel drive, the vehicle can be used in rural areas. “On roads that are not paved with asphalt, especially in the spring thaw and so on - where other cars cannot pass,” he explained.
A mandatory device in the car is a defibrillator-monitor. “It allows you to monitor [the patient’s] heart rate while the car is moving, while the patient is being transported,” said Alexander Balabushevich.
The artificial lung ventilation device allows you to transport patients who cannot breathe on their own - the machine breathes for them. An electric aspirator helps suck out various fluids accumulated in the body, and a nebulizer compressor is needed for patients, for example, with bronchial asthma.
The cars also have an electrocardiograph and the necessary set of tires. “The entire complex of equipment allows us to provide full-fledged modern care to any patient in any condition,” Balabushevich assured.
Naturally, each car has a trolley with which the patient is loaded into the car. According to the deputy chief physician of the station, one or two ambulance employees do not need to have great physical strength to cope with this.
A special feature of the cars is the so-called evacuation shield (orange, to the left of the gurney). “It is used to transport patients with severe spinal injuries. Moreover, it can be used not only for transportation, but also for evacuation from the scene of an accident,” he explains.
